


fighting the temptation to make a career of pain

by LightDescending



Series: two women together is a work [2]
Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort/Angst, Complicated Relationships, Conspiracy, F/F, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Long-Distance Relationship, Origin Story, Sexism, Slow Burn, This is very much A Softer Olivia Octavius the fanfiction, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2020-11-09 06:43:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 56,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20849195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightDescending/pseuds/LightDescending
Summary: "What I can tell you, I’m sure, is that it’s not always the other universes you have to worry about – we’ve got plenty of homegrown paranoia when it comes to agonizing over heroes, and villains, and who belongs in which category, don’t we?"Maybe things would have been different if Olivia Octavius and May Parker hadn't known each other for most of their adult lives. As it is, they have.Miles is Spider-Man. No one knows who Olivia Octavius is, exactly, but maybe she's not Doc Ock anymore. May Parker is a force of nature, a brilliant scientist, and very, very tired.This is what came before Olivia was Doc Ock, and after.





	1. Transcript: Interview 1.0

**Author's Note:**

> So a few months ago, Olivia Octavius and May Parker from Spiderverse grabbed my imagination and wouldn't let it go. We got 2 lines of... not even dialogue, but evidence that at very least they knew each other. Nearly half a year later and I'm still thinking about them. This series was my answer to the question I couldn't stop asking myself, which was "I don't think they're together during the events of the film but what if they were deeply committed to and in love with each other? What would that kind of relationship look like, why would it exist, how would they navigate the specifics of their dynamic together?" 
> 
> This fic is the answer to a few auxiliary questions that I kind of skimmed over in the course of writing _forces we had ranged within us_. Namely, "What would have made Olivia this way" and "what do I believe motivates her in the little fic universe I've created" and "how did her relationship to May develop over the 20 or so years that I skipped entirely". I also wanted to address what I think could have happened after the events of the film. So here we go. 
> 
> I hope that I can tell a story that is satisfying. Thank you, always, for reading.

* * *

…such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence  
with such restraint, with such a grasp  
of the range and limits of violence  
that violence ever after would be obsolete.

(From poem VI in twenty one love poems by Adrienne Rich)

* * *

**[Transcript begins]**

**03/14/2019 13:31 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**Interviewer: **Would you please state your name for the record?

**Octavius: **...Olivia Octavius.

**Interviewer: **It is the 14th of March, 2019 – the time of commencement is 13:31. Let’s get started, shall we?

**Octavius: **[no response]

**Interviewer: **I’d like you to explain Peter Parker.

**Octavius: **...seriously? You’re opening with that?

**Interviewer: **Yes. Explain Peter Parker.

**Octavius: **I’m the source for answers to all the remaining questions you’ve got – that’s what you go for? Really? I didn’t kill Spider-Man. That was Fisk.

**Interviewer: **I don’t mean the Peter Parker from this universe. I was referring to... [agent consults notes] Peter Benjamin Parker.

**Octavius: **Him?

**Interviewer: **Miss Octavius –

**Octavius: **Doctor. Show some propriety, I’m no less a Doctor in here than anywhere else.

**Interviewer: **Doctor Octavius, then. You are aware that this goes nowhere good for you if you fail to co-operate? Or if you stonewall me? Contempt is the least of your worries.

**Octavius: **Is it? Because I don’t worry about contempt. Got plenty of it, in fact.

**Interviewer: **Mm. Be as that may. You’re an intelligent woman. You’ve figured [gestures around the room] all of this out, I’m sure. We have been gracious enough not to detain you -

**Octavius: **Oh, yes, the armed escorts and house arrest are extremely generous.

**Interviewer: **I’m glad you agree.

**Octavius: **Look, let me make myself clear. You want to know about Peter B. Parker? Be more specific. That’s a vague choice of verb you used. I could explain, for example, my observations of his mannerisms and demeanour and how they matched against the Peter from this universe. Or I could explain multiverse theory to you in excruciating, exacting detail, since I’m positive that you haven’t read a single advanced text on the subject, and from that describe how he ended up here back in November. But I suspect you’re angling at something else, so get at what that is. Elucidate your intentions or I won’t be able to help you because you’ve made them opaque. Your time is more valuable to you than mine is to me. I’m not going anywhere until you say I can, and I’ve got work I can do in the interim. All up here, [she taps her temple] since you’ve also prohibited me computer access in your... leniency.

**Interviewer: **Fine. Why did you want to kill Peter B. Parker?

**Octavius: **Was that so hard? And again – really?

**Interviewer: **If you and May Parker are as close as indicated, surely there must have been some hesitation –

**Octavius: **Did you not even read the backgrounder they must have on me? [laughs] Look, whatever concerns you’ve got are invalidated by the fact that even if I wanted him dead, he’s not. He isn’t. He got away. Happy?

**Interviewer: **Hardly. Intent to commit murder – sound familiar?

**Octavius: **Serious charges. Think you can stick ‘em? [she flicks her fingers in a gesture towards the agent] Thwap?

**Interviewer: **I would recommend you take this more seriously, Dr. Octavius. If not for us, then because all of what you are saying is going on the record.

**Octavius: **[makes a circular gesture with her hand, typically taken to mean she wants the agent to get on with it]

**Interviewer: **May Parker has clearance to access these transcripts.

**Octavius: **[No response]

**Interviewer: **It’s clear from your file that’s really some of the only leverage anyone has on you.

**Octavius: **As if you know anything about her –

**Interviewer: **I might. For all you know she’s waiting behind that double-sided glass. Are you sure you want to take that risk?

**Octavius: **You’re all a bunch of –

**Interviewer: **To the point, as requested. I asked a question. You have the answer.

**Octavius: **You’ve already got it.

**Interviewer: **Pardon?

**Octavius: **God. You’re as slow on the uptake as he was. You’ve got it, numbskull. You just said it. Vocalized it for your precious fucking record. I didn’t even know the collider worked as well as it did until he showed up. It wasn’t supposed to, not yet. You want to know why I wanted him dead?

[A brief note: there are a total of four distinct rationales that she discusses here, although a fifth is hinted at. See Appendix B if you have clearance at level 7 or higher for the full analysis based on all interviews conducted]

The potential for data collection on the impacts of interdimensional travel on human cells and tissues was only a tiny part of it, and I don’t see anyone lining up voluntarily for testing on that front. I had an entire building of some of the brightest minds in the country at my disposal, including a medical team – do you think none of them would have been able to crack what was going on in a short period of time, maybe even reverse or halt the process? Who knows, maybe he would have gotten away with mutilation at worst, minor discomfort at best.

But I’m getting away with myself. No, no, I also cared about him not getting loose, going to Queens, and fucking May up by being there. How would you feel if a family member you knew was dead showed up on your doorstep? Hm? Think that would be a little traumatizing, perhaps?

**Interviewer: **So May Parker – her reactions, her well-being as you defined it – partially informed your rationale? Does she know?

**Octavius: **Why? Are you offering to cover couple’s therapy costs?

**Interviewer: **Just asking.

**Octavius: **Private conversations are private conversations. Unless you feel like dragging her in here too. [directs her voice towards the room’s observation windows, raising it to a louder volume] Or unless she’s already listening!

[Octavius returns her attention to the interviewer]

Look, what I wanted was to keep running my experiments without interference – he jeopardized the possibility of that. Once initial containment efforts failed I moved on to plan B, which was to prevent application of the override key to my supercollider, because I had reason to believe it would be destroyed – for the second time in a week? I think the fuck not! When plan B failed, plan C, which was to pitch him into another dimension so that I wouldn’t have to hear him blathering on like he always does. The rest of the Spider-People too, if I could, which clearly didn’t work.

At any rate, this... bootleg was already dying by the time he showed up, so in that initial encounter, I was most concerned about getting him out of my way, and out of May’s, and figure the rest out from there. And fighting him without any inhibitions before I got to that point was an opportunity for some cathartic release for me, no matter how twisted you think that is – Spider-Man infuriated me for years, and while I regret the death of this universe’s version I can’t say I care much for the thought of encountering any others. It was fun to fuck with him. Sue me. Besides...

**Interviewer: **Besides?

**Octavius: **You know as well as I do at this point that the multiverse is unkind. So many iterations out there. What-ifs to infinity. I was operating on the basis of the information I had at the time - is pre-emptive self-defense a compelling motive?

**Interviewer: **What’s that supposed to imply?

[Octavius had been emphatically leaning forward as she spoke, and at this point sits back in her chair and folds her arms. She continues, suddenly smug]

**Octavius: **You know what? I don’t think I need to tell you that. I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to know what I know, and you’re... what, in your early twenties? Mid? You haven’t stopped fidgeting with your pencil since you got here, or drinking coffee, which means the jitters have set in and you’re reaching for whatever creature comforts you have at your disposal. Calming your nerves, and you forgot one or two pieces of interview protocol, so this probably is one of the first times you’ve had to conduct something like this. Who’s to say you’ve got clearance to find out what I’m getting at? I don’t feel right divulging that until I’m sure. Better consult your superiors.

**Interviewer: **You’ve been forthcoming enough already. And what’s to say that I’m not just nervous about spending time one-on-one with a super-villain?

**Octavius: **If that were the case they never would have let you through the door. Not unsupervised. Basic psychological profiling would have excluded you. So no, it’s just the inexperience getting to you, which means my concerns cannot be assuaged at this point as to the status of your security clearance level, and I’m not going to spoil the surprise.

What I can tell you, I’m sure, is that it’s not always the other universes you have to worry about – we’ve got plenty of homegrown paranoia when it comes to agonizing over heroes, and villains, and who belongs in which category, don’t we?

Ooh, better stop there. Move onto the next question, junior. [laughs] Am I irritating you now? You really want full disclosure on why I wanted Peter B. Parker out of my hair? Go ask Nick Fury.


	2. The truth shall make you free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1993, the California Institute of Technology.  
Olivia despises California, nerd boys are exhausting, and a Halloween Caltech tradition is remarkably unscientific given the hype the rest of the institution enjoys. A catalyst of one sort or another introduces herself to Liv. Initial reactions are observed.  
May takes up journal-writing.

**October, 1993**

She’s been here almost three full months, and she despises California to the same degree as she did when she first stepped foot off the airplane. Too hot, cooked tarmac, the bleached blaze of the sun overhead in a sky so blue it feels hostile. The way everything feels sanitized and overly staged, even the palm trees. In her mind, Olivia Octavius runs the countdown timer until she can leave again. Nearly an hour away from the beach, assuming she has a car that can help her navigate through the streets of LA proper once you leave Pasadena and the traffic isn’t bad. She doesn’t have a car. So she hasn’t been to the beach.

What does she have? An inventory:

A fellowship to support her work in the PhD program at Caltech. Her research is funded and she’s getting some experience teaching whether she wants it or not, because a Teaching Assistantship comes along with the package. It turns out she enjoys some parts of teaching: the responsibility, the opportunity to present more or less constantly, the problem-solving involved in planning out a logical sequence of lessons.

A pile of marking, the only part of teaching she truly detests – it’s tedious, it takes forever, and when her mind drifts – and it does – the formulae start to tangle in her vision, requiring a monumental effort to re-focus on the task at hand. If there was some way to automate the process, she would, but for now it’s just endless stacks of paper, graph notebooks full of her untidy scrawl to track the grades and her own calculations when she needs to manually check someone’s work, and pencils. She’s worn three packages of HB standards down to nubs already.

An apartment at the Catalinas, which are pretty new. Bigger than the shoebox she was renting in New York, but not by much. She shares the space with someone allegedly named Karene, who she never sees, and who is working towards her own PhD doing something in Enviro-Sci and Engineering. They keep the common areas clean together, if not strictly speaking tidy, so there hasn’t been much to complain about.

A bedroom with particleboard shelves, a mattress with the texture and give of an overinflated soccer ball, and a plastic cover for the aforementioned mattress that creaks when she sits on it and smells of new vinyl, still, somehow, which is horrible. Liv burns a lot of incense to compensate.

Two massive luggage bags packed with the things she could bring with her checked on the airplane, and the receipt for the storage place where the rest of her stuff is for the time being. One of these she hasn’t unloaded yet, and it’s still slouching against the closet door. It’s just hard to find time to get anything out of it.

She’s got photos taped up on the wall that she had printed at the pharmacy before she left, some small pieces of stylized artwork, and that’s about it. The pictures feature the queer activist group that she’d been a part of, her and May, her and Valerie, her and her old supervisor grinning at the camera, a few grainy poor-exposure shots of presentations from some of the conferences Liv’s been to. The New York skyline. Macros of cells and mineral crystalline structures and metals. A stylized map showing the DEW and Pine Tree Lines. A childhood novelty postcard talking about the friendly atom, dog-eared and pulled from the back of a magazine that made her want to be a scientist in the first place.

Her shelves are stuffed full of books that she needed to brush up on while starting her coursework. When she ran out of room, she started stacking books on the floor, and now there are piles everywhere. She’d love to say she’s grouped them somehow. If Olivia is being honest with herself, they’re arranged more freeform and organic than anything, although she’s positive that she could find whatever she needs if she tries hard enough.

\--

Of course, the effort the search is taking is truly monumental.

Is she happy? That seems almost besides the point. This isn’t what she thought it would be. The orange beaver mascot remains hilarious to her, but she’s still not sure which of her classmates would be in on the joke – and most of them are men. A vast majority, in fact. Women have been allowed to enroll since the 1970’s but she’s still vastly outnumbered; she can count on one hand the number of other women that she sees in her classes with her.

Somehow she thought that coming out here would mean a reboot, a hard reset; back home she was never satisfied with the reputation that she got, partially because it felt like something MacGyvered together over time rather than a deliberate construction. The slap-dashed-ness of it all didn’t suit her, at the end of the day, even if the more performative aspects of derailing classes had been fun. Liv prefers something _methodical, _and definitely chosen rather than imposed, or reactive to what other people expect.

So when she came out here, it was with a plan to be systematic in her studies, faultless in her approach, irreproachable professionally. Caltech has an honor code – fine. That’s something she can work within. And there’s the expectation from the start of collaboration – also fine. The labs that she’s a part of for her courses, she doesn’t hate so far. Her colleagues are all as driven as her, and she can get through the meetings just fine and play nicely with others so long as she gets her piece said early on in the planning process about what roles she wants to play, what her strengths are.

But it’s the social element that’s completely thrown her, because it’s not part of her main purpose for being here. Like, the work is good, but the blowing off steam part? Trickier. Much trickier. Getting plugged into a scene requires a bit of putting yourself out there. Unfortunately, tentative forays have all been disappointing at best. Diminishing the aspects of personality that she’d amplified in New York has so far just led to misunderstanding.

The guys who aren’t trying to convince her to sleep with them are chronic stoners, or drunk on their own egos; the ones who seemed halfway decent are all either too busy with their own studies to really talk with her, or are part of the anime club. Liv is still fairly certain that she’s low-key banned from attending that right now, because of the fight she got in about the fansubs to Evangelion _clearly_ being inaccurate. Unless she can show up with some tapes of the newer shows she’s probably screwed for the time being. She just wishes she could be on friendly terms with people without them assuming flirtation exists by default, or without feeling a bizarre sense of competitiveness – some of the guys here figured they’d try to impress her, and ended up spiteful when she demonstrated as strong or better of a grasp on the content as they had.

Then again, she honestly doesn’t know what she was expecting.

\--

Which brings her to here, tonight, Halloween, the first year she can recall that she hasn’t put together a costume. She feels shitty about it. The rest of the area is swarming with people who managed despite the crunch – she’s seen countless unoriginal outfits. So far the only one to get an appreciative laugh out of her is someone with a sandwich board hung around their neck painted to look like the cover page of a paper, with ‘revise and resubmit’ stamped in giant red letters across it. Even so, why does nobody ever wear shoes? It’s almost November and the freshies are still skateboarding around without shoes on. Even the ones wearing costumes.

Olivia takes a sip from her thermos. It’s totally coffee. Totally. It just happens to be spiked with something.

They’re all idiots for sitting out here, she figures. Tradition or not, this is likely just an excuse to sit around and drink covertly and hang out. Splatter some gourds against the ground for fun, but because it’s Caltech, they have to make a show of acting like there’s scientific merit to the entire procedure. A couple of months ago, Liv probably would have found this charming. Right now she’s bitter and tired enough to think it’s pretentious. The sun is going down, and molten colour smears across the sky. Liv tries not to think of what it would look like at the ocean right now.

Around the time that the buzz starts to hit, she glances over her shoulder to see some girl has perched on a nearby bench - she’s sitting knees apart, leaning forward intently. A large journal is between her hands, and coloured pencils flying across the page, and she’s sucking her lower lip into her mouth. She’s wearing one of those oversized neon-coloured polyester jackets and a pair of cut-off shorts and what could only be Birkenstock sandals. As Liv watches, she drops one colour for another, picking it up where they rest on top of something fabric resting next to her.

And she looks up from what she’s drawing, right at Olivia.

They both freeze for a second, before the girl smirks. She gestures with a pencil in the direction of the Millikan Library, and Olivia just… stares back.

“Look that way again,” the girl finally calls over.

Huh. What do you say to that? Liv decides to humour her, although she glances sideways at whoever this person is. She furrows her brow, tears a corner off of the page, rubs a thumb against the paper and squints in Liv's direction. Makes a few more broad strokes across the page. Olivia feels a staticky sparking shiver run from the top of her head and down her neck.

The quality of the light changes some more and the lamps along the pathways start to come on. Some students pull out a set of stereo speakers and start blasting music, though Olivia can’t make out the details of their set up. There’s a ragged cheer that comes up from the crowd gathering, although there’s also some areas being sectioned off by volunteers to clear the area where the drop will happen in the courtyard.

The person sketching seems to finish up; she shoves all her supplies into a canvas shoulder bag, and closes the distance with a few short strides. She plops herself down next to Olivia and extends the Moleskine in her hand.

“Couldn’t help myself. I’m Tegan.” 

It’s good work. Well-defined lines; she’s gotten Olivia’s nose right, her chin, her thin lips, the suggestion of her curls. The rest of the pages are covered with other gesture work, other people walking around the area. Tegan is still watching her, her chin propped up on her hand. It takes a second to realize that she’s still holding onto the book, that maybe Tegan is waiting for a response of some sort other than Olivia just staring at it, but then she breaks in.

“This is what I do to relax. Farthest thing from what I think this campus is all about, but hey.”

“Do you have to do this for course work or something?”

“Something like that. I’m trying to challenge myself. Best work I can get in the shortest amount of time. Interesting people. I’m at USC in in Cinematic Arts. Plus one of my friends is in TACIT, which gives me an excuse to hang out here so I don’t just look like a psycho, if anyone asks. I didn’t get your name..?”

“… I’m Olivia.”

“Thanks for modelling for me, Olivia, even if you didn’t exactly sign up for it.” Tegan kicks her feet out in front of her, one of the sandals slipping on her foot so that it’s teetering a little at the edge of her toes. She leans back on her hands and Olivia gets a good look at her. “So what’s happening here, anyways?”

“You haven’t heard?” Tegan shakes her head and Olivia snorts. “Buncha nerds are gonna shove a frozen pumpkin off the library roof to see if it gives off a triboluminescent spark when it hits the ground.”

“… No _shit!_”

“Yeah, no, it’s stupid-”

“That’s awesome! What the _fuck_. What do they do to get it to do that?”

“I mean, they freeze it in liquid nitrogen – it’s not that cool though, the science doesn’t check out, hardly anyone’s seen it work, and I’m skeptical that anyone actually has…”

“Don’t be a buzzkill,” Tegan grins, nudging Olivia in her arm. “Gimme the Reader’s Digest version, now I’m curious.”

Liv pushes her glasses back up her nose and tries not to lean into that echo of where Tegan contacted her briefly, her arms still so close in proximity. “I mean… when some things – not a pumpkin – like quartz crystals or mint Life Savers, get crushed, there’s a spark – charges trying to reunite that ionize the air temporarily –”

“Ooh, sounds romantic. I mean, I nearly failed high school chemistry so I don’t remember what ionize means, but the whole thing about charges trying to get together…” She nods towards Liv’s thermos. “Can I have some? It’s starting to get cold out here.”

“Does this pass for cold in California? And how old are you?”

“Twenty-five, and I can show you my ID if you want. C’mon, I’m not an undergrad, I know what you’ve probably got in there. Rum?”

“Whiskey.”

“Even better.”

Maybe it’s that this is the most natural conversation Liv thinks she’s had with someone since she got here, or maybe it’s because Tegan is… really cute, actually, but she finds herself passing the thermos over and watching as Tegan tilts her head back, closes her eyes as she takes a good swig. Olivia definitely doesn’t watch Tegan lick her lips with anything more than her peripheral vision.

“So what are you here for?”

Ain’t that the question.

“Applied Physics PhD.”

“No way. You must be ridiculously smart.”

“I’m a fellow, so I better be.”

“You didn’t strike me as a butch.”

Liv glances over again, sharp. Tegan has a wicked glint in her eye as she passes the thermos back over. “…Clever.”

“Not bad for my age, right? Plus, you’re not decking me or protesting, so I must not be too far off the mark.”

“Precise but not accurate. And I’m only a year or so older than you.”

“Figured as much. You must be pretty new to town here.”

“How’d you deduce that, then?”

“You’re one of the only older students I see here sitting alone. I’ve been here more than once, and you carry a shitton of paper with you sometimes, so you probably teach on top of whatever else you’re doing in your classes. And you don’t dress like you’re used to California. Yet.”

Liv doesn’t have a good response for that except to try and deflect as some whooping starts up somewhere in front of them – something in the eyes magnetic. “Are you stalking me?”

“Wouldn’t say that. Just that I’ve sketched you a couple of times when I see you working outside. You’re one of the coolest-looking people here. I wander around campus. You can look through my work if you like. Maybe I could show you some of them later, like, over coffee.”

Renewed cheering from behind them. Olivia can’t help but glance up and see a few figures, poised at the edge of the rooftop, nine stories up or so, with their arms raised above them like a call to action. “Maybe.”

“Better than a no, I’ll take it. _Whoa, _you didn’t mention they would be dropping _lots_ of pumpkins!”

“I didn’t know they were going to,” Olivia is saying, turning back towards Tegan, only to realize that she’s slipped in closer along Liv. Her face is scant inches away.

“Hey, I think I saw a spark,” she says, slipping a scrap of paper into Olivia’s palm with a wink, before jerking backwards with her sketches clutched in her hands. She shrugs her jacket fully back onto her shoulders and jogs away, Olivia hearing her sandals slap against the sidewalk as she goes.

It’s her number.

Olivia doesn’t see anything flash in the dark, but she sure feels warmer.

**November, 1993**

Olivia gives it until midterm marks are submitted before she dials out to Tegan, listening to the tinny ringing and twisting the phone cord around her fingers until it tangles into a double-helix. This will be entirely innocent. She knows what she’s getting herself into.

“Took you long enough,” comes a light tone from the other side of the line. “I was starting to think I’d made an idiot of myself. Was about to take a classified out in the Missed Connections section of the student paper. Do they have one of those?”

“You still down for coffee? I can host you.”

“When do you want me over?”

As scheduling would have it, it ends up being the same day works best – a cooler Saturday, though the weather channel in the grad lounge on Liv’s floor is warning that the Santa Ana winds are coming through in short order, that people should be preparing for them. When Liv goes to let Tegan into the building, she’s wearing some kind of paint-splattered overall-with-shorts, a raggedy t-shirt with a hole in one of the shoulders. Liv notices Tegan noticing everything – how her eyes settle everywhere, including on Liv. They’re entering the apartment just as Karene emerges from her bedroom, a bag slung over one shoulder, blinking.

“You’re alive,” she observes.

“Uh… yeah. Sorry. I would’ve told you someone was coming over but this was kind of spontaneous. And I didn’t realize you were home.” 

“My door was closed, we good.” Karene stifles a yawn.

Tegan’s already stepping forward with a hand extended. “You’re Liv’s roommate?”

“Yeah, I’m Karene. Enviro Sci.”

“Wicked. I’m Tegan. So like, you’re with the earthquake monitors or..?”

“Nah, I’m doing my research on renewable energy. Solar makes the most sense right now, for where we’re at.”

In the next ten minutes, Liv learns more about Karene than she’s thought to ask; she’s from San Francisco originally, moved down the coast on scholarship, is taking full advantage of the diversity funding available as a student from a visible minority and smiles a little triumphantly as Tegan urges her to stick it to the bigots. It’s revealed that Karene knows all the best taqueiras in the neighbourhood, because that’s where the community garden collective goes to meet up when they’re done planting or weeding, and that her boyfriend is living in L.A. proper and moonlighting as a DJ, so he might know some of Tegan’s friends who keep sending cassette demos out to anyone who’ll take them. Olivia winds up lurking on the armrest of the couch, listening more than she talks, and accidentally breaks the flow of conversation when she gets up to go set the kettle on the stove.

“I’d better go. Give you two some space,” Karene says, straightening up from where she’s been leaning against the wall. “Gotta go study anyways.” Olivia can’t tell if the look she casts back at them before stepping out the door is meaningful or not, but Tegan fills the silence once the door shuts in her wake.

“She’s cool. I like her.”

“I’m pretty sure you just said more words to her than I’ve exchanged with her in the last week. We keep missing each other.”

“Oof, that’s rough – s’Caltech really that demanding? You should get to know her better. She sounds amazing. So where are you from anyways?”

Olivia clicks the burner on with a _snap_, watching the coil flush vivid red. “New York.”

“City or state?”

“Both – I did my undergrad and my master’s program there as an in-state student. Kinda went straight from one into the next, but I did a couple of internships in between, so that’s why I’m… you know. A little older.”

“What’re you researching?”

Liv turns around to see that Tegan has made herself comfortable on the couch, sprawling across its length with her shoes kicked off on the floor. There’s a narrow strip of skin showing between the runched up bottom of her shirt and the side-buttons of her overalls; she’s grabbed one of the old copies of _Physics Today_ that Liv keeps on the coffee table, mostly to use as a coaster when she needs one, and is flipping through the pages, squinting at the articles. Liv tries not to parse the way Tegan's lounging as an invitation and fails. 

“The cool version is I’m on a team trying to investigate the possibility of the multiverse –”

“No _way._ Like alternate dimension-type stuff?”

“Exactly like that.”

“Whoa – I mean I remember reading some stuff about that in like, my textbook way back when? But that’s all sci-fi, isn’t it? I thought the theory had stalled out, or was impossible to prove, or something.” She makes eye contact with Olivia over the thin pages. Liv swallows. 

“Not… not exactly. And if I’m lucky, one day I’ll be writing the textbook about this shit. It’s less a matter of being impossible to prove, more one of controlling how the information is disseminated – journalists who try to condense entire bodies of work into catchy headlines, or the public jumping to conclusions that this kind of research poses an unacceptable risk to them. Like, for example, it’s not that nuclear power isn’t viable, but people took a look at what’s happening with Chernobyl and the Cold War and have decided it’s too politically volatile to try to make that a source of clean energy. Hence my shift to high-power physics.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think at some point it’s more about what can get funding and maintain it, less about what’s actually good or worth pursuing. I also think it’s about staying smart enough to prevent it from being weaponized _immediately_.”

“Hm,” Tegan hums thoughtfully. “That seems… over my friggin’ head, to be honest, but I’ll take your word for it. The most I see of the Cold War is what crops up in the movie theatres. Or someone storyboarding something post-apocalyptic.”

“Oh. Uh…” Liv flounders. “It’s like… alternate universe research is further along than anyone realizes, is what I meant, it’s just no one can _afford _another space-race right now. We’re all stuck sitting on our hands so that we can spring any _real _discoveries on the USSR, same as anyone in the sciences right now. Plus the optics are bad for something that everyone knows will most likely lead to interstellar colonialism or resource-extraction wars fought by proxies… so people in my field have to keep that on the down-low, and avoid speaking in absolute terms about the theories being tested. What’s more accurate is that it’s impossible to prove _at this point in time_, which is easier to say anyways, although most laypeople don’t have any idea what proving a theory even means, or degrees of certainty, or whatever.”

“_Heavy shit_.”

The kettle shrills on the stove and startles them both. Liv goes to construct some cups of coffee, brushing her hands against her thighs like there’s something on them that needs to be knocked off. She’s cursing the fact that she doesn’t have anything fancier than _Folger’s_ to pour over. Why’d she wear the cargo pants? They’re comfortable but not flattering. Why does she care about whether they’re flattering? She’s not going to let this be A Thing. She’s learned her lessons back home, and there’s no time to have that kind of drama invited back in her life.

“Nice to see you actually can loosen up,” Tegan calls across the room at her.

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t take it the wrong way, I just mean you seemed really tense when I met you the other night. And you don’t seem like a person who’d be tense. I mean. The things you wear, the way you hold yourself. Everything you said just now! Get you in your comfort zone and you just…” Liv half-turns to see Tegan swoop a hand in an upward curve, _whoosh_. 

“I mean, I’ve always been told I’m… high-strung.”

“I guess? No more than I am, though.” Tegan swings her feet off of the couch and onto the floor, stance spread, leaning forward on her elbows, and there’s a real earnestness to her face that catches Liv off guard. “Are you doing okay?”

“Existentially, relatively, or personally?” She deflects.

“Generally.”

Liv snorts. She clatters the spoon against the insides of the cup a few times, looking at the dark swirl and the steam; but Tegan lets the silence stretch until Liv can’t stand it.

“Oh. Sure. Yeah, I’m fine - I’m at the school of my dreams, I’m in the top percentage of the smartest people in the country according to standard and current metrics, and I fucking _hate_ it here.” Olivia whirls, glowering without really meaning to as though Tegan is personally representative of the whole state of California. “How do any of you stand it?”

“…Maybe you’re just not giving yourself time to love it. Did you say you’ve been here, what, three months?”

“If that,” Liv says.

“Well, did you know _me_ for the last three months?”

“That’s a high opinion to have of yourself.”

“Says the person who just proclaimed herself a genius. Seriously, I think I can help you out. I’m a local! I know all the best places! And I can borrow my roommate’s car, if you need to get somewhere. How else do you think I got over here in less than an hour? Have you even been to the coast-proper, yet? If there’s a heatwave coming through, you’re going to want to.”

“Why are you so invested? You don’t know me.”

“Because I think you’re cute as hell even if you’re prickly, and it’s hard enough finding other gays in the area despite it being Cali-fucking-fornia, and this is my way of asking you out on a date. You’re the first non-boring person I’ve met in a long time.”

That’s forward. “I—you… seriously? I’m not looking to date anyone.”

“Fine. Friend-date, then. Or just a friend.”

“I’m honestly looking to finish my degree and get out. Just to be really clear about what you’d be getting yourself into, so that there’s no misunderstanding.”

“Oh, really now?” She flops back against the couch, and Liv feels the weight of her stare. “Why are you so determined to have the entire experience suck while you’re at it? Is it ‘cause you’re East Coast? Is this some sort of state loyalty thing?”

Liv thinks about the city-closed skies, the concrete and metal and glass, about how suffocating everything had gotten. The politics shitty and getting worse, and how she was tired of feeling like she had to prove she was a real activist to the rest of people in her circle; how vicious the in-fighting was getting in her usual groups of friends, especially with relationship drama layered on top of everything, given some of her exes didn’t want a thing to do with her.

Remembers how suddenly things had jolted with May away from comfortable companionship all through their Master’s program to this awkward distance, as all of May’s time got swallowed up by preparing a bedroom for her infant nephew, with consoling a grieving husband. And the acceptance package arrived, and it was much too late to consider switching over to some local program, Liv couldn’t very well close the doors that Caltech would open for her. The thought of having to deal with some kid in his diapers who she low-key resented the existence of just to spend time with her best friend was _too much_…

This girl is trying so hard.

“I just couldn’t be in New York anymore. Needed some fresh scenery. To be around new people who didn’t know me. To prove myself, maybe. Might have overcommitted myself.”

Tegan lets that linger, before she hops off the couch and comes over to stand next to Liv. Olivia’s not sure how she feels about the once-over Tegan’s eyes do, the searching look across her face – she lifts an eyebrow, hoping it pushes whatever expression she’s wearing more into the realm of quizzical and less pitiful. Tegan responds by putting her hand on over Liv’s, where she’s been holding a dripping spoon over one of the coffee cups for the last several moments.

“Sorry for pushing so hard. I take mine with some sugar,” she says quietly. “You know… maybe you’re not running away from something. More like towards something else.”

There’s a split second where Liv lets herself consider that before she takes the hint and leans in to Tegan, mouth landing quick and hard and sure, bracing with her hand against the counter.

“I knew you’d be a good kisser,” says Tegan all breathlessly, already tugging the bottom of Liv’s shirt out of her jeans, and Liv’s suddenly aware of just how desperately she’s missed human contact, hands on skin on bodies and… ah, fuck it. This isn’t the worst way to hook up with someone.

* * *

**October 14th, 1993**

I’m trying to start writing again, as a way to keep myself sane.

Peter cries at night sometimes and there’s not a thing Ben or I can do to prevent it. I think he misses his parents, even if he doesn’t realize it. Would this have been easier or harder if he’d lost them when he was old enough to remember them properly? I don’t know.

In a couple of years he’ll be off at school. We’re trying to manage as best we can until then. Ben has picked up a couple extra shifts at work, making up for the fact that I can’t really afford to be out of the house right now.

I try not to sound ungrateful. We weren’t ready for this. At least with the circumstances people know better than to congratulate us; I see how the younger couples at daycare get cooed over. I wouldn’t stand for that.

I’ve become a fixture at the library, reading books on all these subjects like childrearing and such. It’s nothing I’ve tried to become educated on? We didn’t see this as part of our lives as a couple so Ben and I haven’t ever prepared for the possibility. It’s expensive, for one thing. He’s growing like a weed, and we’re trying to get clothes that are a little oversized so that he’ll eventually fit them. There’s so much neither of us knew about. It doesn’t come naturally. We’ll do our best…

Writing is helping less than I thought it would.

I wish all of this was less lonesome an experience.

\--

**January 2nd, 1994**

We rang in the New Year with the Xiao family at their house. It was nice – there were multiple jokes about us all being lucky enough to have two of those holidays. The meal planning got interesting. They have a couple of kids themselves, and their youngest Michael can fit into most of Peter’s cast-offs so we’ve got a plan to offload anything surplus on them. At least these won’t go to waste!

Liv sent a late gift with an apology attached for missing my birthday entirely; she said in the note that she wasn’t expecting it as early as it happened. I’m just touched she made the effort. She sent me a book of poetry. I’ll be reading it later – Dream Work by Mary Oliver. The letter included was short, and it took a while to get here. I think I’ll write a response – she didn’t mention her coursework or what’s happening out in Pasadena. It’s been a fair bit of time time since we talked, and I wonder if she’s got my landline still. I feel like we lost track of each other once Ben and I got the place here in Queens. At any rate I’m glad we reconnected. We had a good friendship and I don’t want to let that go.

\--

**February 28th, 1994**

Liv replied – true to form, and more in line with what I was expecting, she practically sent me an essay. Ben’s eyebrows hit his hairline when he saw how many pages, exactly, but I guess she’s had some catching up to do for me – a good half a year. She mentioned my reply got to her around the end of January or so, but with the semester being how it is... Must remember to send this next one earlier next time. I guess her phone line can’t accommodate the kind of long distance calls she’d have to make, so writing it is.

Note to self: Ask Bette for that torte recipe. Ben’s birthday.

\--

**April 19th, 1994**

It’s a hard thaw this year but I’m glad to see the birds back – Ben’s away most of this week on training. We were fixing the roof the other day; leak prevention before the rain can really get to it. I’ve planted bulbs in the backyard and I’m taking out some of the seeds we saved; Ben kvetched the whole time we were setting them by last year, but he’ll be glad for the cukes and the tomatoes when they come in. As usual! He’ll be spreading compost down. I’m keeping an eye on the thermometer to figure out when’s the best time to put things in the ground.

Another gift from Liv. This one to share with Ben – some sort of chocolate, and details about her classes she’s teaching in. Sounds like she’s hit her stride after all, despite all that talk about not wanting to stay in this track of academia. I could see her writing textbooks. And it sounds like a student of hers wants some help putting together something for a Caltech yearly tradition, which from her account is outrageous – something about the upper year students and their dorms.

God, but talking to Liv makes me miss school sometimes – I have some books I’ve been meaning to take out from the library. No reason I can’t keep up my studies on the side, right? When Peter’s settled down I’ve got plenty of time on my hands. Maybe could even take him with me – no reason not to. It’s a public space. Maybe Connie and Alanis will meet me there – Alanis adopted recently, they finally let her as a ‘single parent’, and since they’re quiet about their relationship it seems like Connie can stay in the picture, but having me around should take some pressure off of them…

Reading List:

  * Cellulose and Fibre Science Developments
  * Handbook of Fibre Science and Technology
  * Agricultural and synthetic polymers: biodegradability and utilization
  * Journal of polymer science (what can I get my hands on?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved every single thing that I learned about Caltech from their official promotional materials, the Wikipedia page, the student newsletters, and especially from Zes and C.; their expertise and input was a delight and helped me put some details in that I think really make the experience! Grad school is so weird. 
> 
> I figure May writes way more frequently than I've made it seem like here, but I'm being selective.


	3. Transcript – Interview 2.0

**[Transcript begins]**

**03/19/2019 13:29 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**The following is excerpted for viewing by individuals with clearance up to and including security levels 5. **

**If level 6 through 7, consult the following for an edition without redactions: 0012447-OO-2019. **

**Timestamp: 13:47**

**Interviewer: **After hitting the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, what facility was your next target?

**Octavius: **Brookhaven National Lab – or at least some of their secure servers. They’d gotten wise to my previous spear-phishing and locked down the cloud networks with some additional protections, so I had to actually track down another way in. Spring of 2016 as well, though later in the season. It was more convenient than Fermilab or anywhere else at the time. Are you confirming against a list or..?

**Interviewer: **Unimportant.

**Octavius:** Hmph. At any rate, internal facility storage at both Alchemax offices was still an issue at that point and there was only so much room I could sacrifice on the encrypted hard-drives. If you’d seen it I think you would have been as surprised as me. For the first day of extraction, our entire network shut down a few times from trying to manage the process. It took 3 days for the scraping to be complete. When I retrieved the data chip it had several thousand files of various sizes, and after that I still had to decrypt a significant amount of it. It took the IT department a good couple of weeks to sift through all the data, and the info scientists longer to categorize it into our databases.

**Interviewer: **No qualms about proprietary copyright until it affects you?

**Octavius: **Not really. Legitimate access is within my budget, but I was after the unpublished stuff. Datasets, manuscripts for internal use. I try to keep my personal library of research accessible. Immediate access with no delays and no need for more than an intranet. More secure. Maybe there’s a trade-off in the short term to take time assimilating all those publications, but it sure beats confidentiality clauses, DRMs, and other people claiming the right to oversight.

**Timestamp: 14:13 **

**Interviewer: **Around what time did you notice infiltration of your own systems?

**Octavius: **When we had to start formally running drills for the lab on Spider-Man deterrence methods. Mid-2018, I think? I worked for Fisk at that point. I lost track. Clearly Spidey was putting together the pieces, following leads. Once he knew that there was a base of operations in Hudson Valley... things got more complicated.

**Interviewer: **Hm. Did you never guess that it was Peter Parker? Were there indications that the breach had involved a mole?

**Octavius: **I should have been suspicious that he knew where the server rooms were, sure. But overall, I assumed if someone was clever enough to access the network, they were clever enough to snag blueprints first as part of the planning process.

**Interviewer: **Interesting choice of adjective.

**Octavius: **I can appreciate someone else’s intellect when credit is due. If I’m exploiting weaknesses in the system, that’s their fault; if they manage to find cracks in my own system, that’s a margin of error I need to account for. Upon my own head be it, etc.

**Timestamp: 14:26**

**Interviewer: **What was all of this leading up to? What was your end goal?

**Octavius: **Constantly fluid, ever-changing. The boundaries were as responsive as they needed to be for new input, new stimulus.

**Interviewer: **We need an actual answer.

**Octavius: **Fine. There were two goals, actually. At the risk of oversimplification, I was studying the existence of the multiverse first – it’s what drove the majority of my practical work, backed by my theoretical studies. Who wouldn’t want to dedicate their life to studying that subject? To confirm the existence of, observe, and eventually to access - that was part of my CERN proposal, eventually what we focused on at Alchemax. We all wanted a slice of that pie. Don’t you? 

**Interviewer:** And the second?

**Octavius: **Have you ever seen an antimatter reaction modelled?

**Interviewer: **No.

**Octavius: **The term annihilation gets used. Fierce burst of energy. I was keeping my eye out for a possible solution to entropic decay, or the energy crisis, take your pick. Imagine if we could not only travel to new dimensions, but if in the process of opening a portal, also harness enough energy from the resultant tear in space-time to be stored and utilized later? Predictive modelling was showing that the rifts created would generate an excess amount of total power, and one of my departments was entirely dedicated to finding ways of collecting that before it became lost as heat or light or other byproducts.

That’s an exciting prospect – at very least, we could cut the operating costs of our facility to a fraction of what other laboratories need in order to stay open. At best, we could operate at zero-waste, or possibly even productively. That’s a distinct competitive advantage. There are other obvious applications of course – imagine marketing portable wormholes as a way to power the lights in your home, or heavy industry - but in order for that level of research to be possible, I had to solve the more immediate concerns of how in the hell to maintain a facility that was entirely private, and therefore ineligible for certain streams of funding.

**Interviewer: **Wait, so you’re saying that divestiture from fossil fuels would be possible in that scenario?

**Octavius: **Obviously. 

**Interviewer: **And that wasn’t something you... never mind. When did you first begin to consider the possibility?

**Octavius: **When did you decide you wanted to be an intelligence agency shill? Memory is faulty and when you’re my age, things all start to collapse down on themselves. Maybe I’ve always been chasing the possibility of this kind of technological breakthrough.

**Interviewer: **Would you call it a compulsion?

**Octavius: **That makes it sound like I didn’t choose this. If nothing else, it’s a good way to distract myself. And my official career track makes for a fun set of bylines when I introduce myself at parties and someone asks me what I do for a living. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special shout-out in this chapter (and many others) to Stellarators/Starfoozle, my amazing wife, to whom I have to attribute a TON of the headcanons that the two of us have worked out about Liv's motivation for Doing Science and what her research goals were! (I've had this and the next chapter written for a while, but the overlap was fairly high between some of the ideas here and those in the fic we co-wrote, Lampshades on Fire - and I wasn't about to drop this before we had a chance to finish editing that one and posting it together!)


	4. The speed of light in a vacuum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1994-1996.  
Olivia finally hits her stride and begins to feel more at home: Caltech Ditch Day is participated in, the beach is visited frequently, proximity and shared interests mean a roommate becomes a friend. The US Postal Service is utilized in a bi-directional manner to maintain an older friendship. These gains don't necessarily mean Liv feels understood. Volatility is found to be present in her relationship, as are fracture points and reactivity.  
May should maybe stick to reading poetry.

**May, 1994 **

It’s 5 am on a Tuesday, which normally would indicate the presence of a fast-approaching deadline or engrossing text. Comprehensive exams and course work are, however, conspicuously uninvolved. This is Liv and Tegan, crouching with a set of electrician’s tools and the lights on, preparing for the most infamous day at Caltech. Instructors, Liv included, have issued a blanket class cancellation. Liv is three espresso shots in and feeling _lively_.

“Oh my _God, _this stack is going to make them _lose their minds_.”

“They apparently take revenge on the senior if they can’t figure out how to crack it. It’s called a counterstack.”

“Then Christina should have planned her own instead of outsourcing it,” Tegan grins. They high five.

“Have I told you lately that I love the way you think?”

“Show me, why don’t you?”

Liv returns the smile, kissing Tegan and biting a little against her lip. The air gets close and tight and hot around them for a second, there in the exhilarating empty of Christina’s dorm room– they can hear the other seniors in the hall, the footsteps and mild thumpings as everyone gets their prep done for Ditch Day. Tegan licks into her mouth with a hand braced on Liv’s thigh, sly and secret, before pulling away with a wink.

“Don’t get me all distracted. I’ve got no idea what I’m doing here.” 

“You requested it,” Liv smirks, heart pounding, but turns back to the microphone she’s wiring up to the rest of their rig. “But yeah, we shouldn’t electrocute ourselves.”

“God, these things are so creepy,” Tegan says, starting to rummage through their backpacks of supplies again. “What are they called? Furbies?”

“Furbos,” Liv corrects absently. “A comp-sci friend of mine invented them with his buddy. He says he’s going to try to sell them to a big toy company someday, pay down some student loans with the revenue. Early version of machine-learning, from the sounds of it – they’re programming them to be able to learn language over time.”

“Why don’t they have skin?”

“These are the prototypes – the armature, right? I think the plan is to cover the length of it with like, fun fur or something.”

“And the long bodies? That’s messed up.”

“The better to drape around your frame, I guess.” Liv reaches over and switches on the one that Tegan is holding, which immediately opens its eyes and starts clacking a plastic beak together. “It just wants to _love you_—”

“_FUCK, no_!” Tegan shrieks, laughing, flinging the toy into Liv’s arms.

“Come on, Tegan, Furbos can’t hurt you, one of these will only tell the truth and the other only lies—”

“They can tell their lies in _hell_!”

Liv starts cackling as Tegan bats away her hands. “Hand me the twist ties?”

They’re rigging and securing a hacked speaker in the cavernous hollow at the center of each Furbo when Tegan pipes up again.

“I’ve been stoked for you”

“Why’s that?”

“When I met you, you were such a _downer_. I was hyping up everything I did to try and get you to bust out of your funk! I was like, who is she. How can she look so hot and yet project such anti-fun vibes. Why is she radiating absolute misery. Why do I want to jump her bones.”

“As if the last one needs _any _explanation. I’m hot as hell. Though clearly I’ll have to get better at masking that other shit. Repression tactics!”

“Oh, honey, no, that’s how the maladaptation gets you.”

“But I can get away with so much more when no one knows what I’m actually thinking, or if they’re wrong about the conclusions they come to. Misdirection, right?”

“I know what you’re actually thinking though, right?”

“Obviously.” Liv pauses for a second, ripping off a strip of duct tape with her teeth before continuing. “Your personality, the energy of it, it’s good. I thought coming out here would be no big deal and then bam, it might as well be another planet –”

“Another dimension?” 

“_Lame_. And I’m like, for fuck’s sakes, who is this moody asshole – I didn’t have energy to go anywhere, or do anything, and at first I did but then I realized California’s vibe is _completely _different from New York, and I got all self-conscious about how people were responding to me and just… I dunno. I shut down, I guess. I was worried for a while that this was just who I was, now, this bitter and angry person with a thesis to start… it sucked. This is the most fun I’ve had since getting here.”

“Welcome back, then.”

“It feels _good._”

The thing about Furbos is that they’re not designed to actually talk yet – Ahmed explained these are only capable of nonsense looping vocalizations triggered by certain stimuli, that the machine learning element is on the backburner until he finalized the robotics completely. So the way Liv figures they’ll accomplish what they’re after is with a simple speaker set, extra fun-fur, some sort of stand that they can tuck the excess material under. For that part they’re using hot glue, even though Liv had half a mind to reach out to May for some sewing directions – buy a calling card or something. She’d decided against it in the end, and hot glue it was.

The tricky part is going to be re-coding the mouth to open and close in synch with the sounds emerging from the Furbos, for realism, but she’s pretty sure she’s managed it with the help of a volume of Robotics for Imbiciles. A decibel reader, circuits that measure when there’s an impulse being conducted from the sound of active speech through the wires, Zhang Wei letting them into the fabrication lab after hours one night with some of his rejected prototypes. After some truly horrific experiments with only the facial mechanisms – a disembodied Furbo skull sitting on the countertop with the beak chattering away – Liv is pretty sure she’s got something that will pass muster for Ditch Day. In terms of an actual setup, she’s planning to keep this stack localized; other groups have set up elaborate scavenger hunts, but Christina’s weed supplier isn’t _that _good, so it’s not warranted to expend a bunch of extra effort. Liv’s pretty sure Christina has set the preamble up herself.

These kids are supposed to be smart, right? Which means they should be able to puzzle out what’s happening, once they get frustrated enough. Then again, Liv has also seen some snickering upperclassmen running by with trollies loaded high with reinforced cinder block, rebar, and plate steel with which to create a layered barricade to their door (she asked), so maybe she’s giving them all too much credit. 

So far, there’s Christina’s prize piled on her bed in her room; equipment rigged to electrify the door handle lightly; two Furbos, wed in an unholy manner to a set of broadcasting equipment, which will be placed on either side of the dorm door; and a script that Tegan helped her write, presented as a series of riddles designed to represent the culmination of the trials which the students have been through already. One of these only tells truths and the other only tells lies… except the trick here is that it’s not a recording, but live projection. After the pre-amble, Olivia will say “the door is unlocked” through one robotic abomination, allegedly the one telling the truth, and via the other will intone “the handle is electrified”. Both statements are factually true, but when an underclassman goes to reach for the handle and get a zap – well, they’ll likely go hunting for additional clues instead of just _trying the door_.

Which is unlocked. Jackpot, kiddos.

Liv always hated that thought experiment.

Christina told them that if none of the freshies or sophs solve it, they’re free to pillage the spoils themselves and have a party – Tegan had ducked her head in earlier and noted that some of it was the legendary Chem Lab brew, developed in artisanal small batches by students who definitely shouldn’t have been appropriating lab equipment in such a manner. Not saying they’re hoping no one cracks it, but they’d have a fun time later if nobody does.

They finally finish sometime closer to 7 in the morning – close the door behind them, and take up their position across the hall in the dorm room of one of Christina’s friends, who claimed to be a conscientious objector to Ditch Day but in reality just needed to fly home early for a summer internship.

“I think this is awakening something in me,” Liv whispers.

“I’ll awaken something in you.”

“We’ve got a couple hours before they make it this far, right?”

“Be a shame not to take advantage,” Tegan says, to which Liv heartily agrees. 

\--

The Arts major who beats their stack gets bragging rights for weeks, and claims in the student newsletter that she only did so because she didn’t overthink things.

Liv likes her moxie. 

**September, 1994**

She’s finally snagged a bike from one of the end-of-term auctions, though she’s learned not to get too attached – cycling culture at Caltech is _anarchy_, as it turns out. A chronic lack of bike racks located near building entrances, the racks that are there festooned with wheels chained to them left behind when a bike got stolen, everyone peeling across lawns in flagrant violation of the policy to stay on the bike paths.

Liv adores it. She’s become a menace on two wheels and pedals bedlam all over Pasadena.

\--

She and Karene have full-on conversations at this point too – the state of energy demands, how the US and Canada and a few other places globally have the same issues. Diversity in your natural resources doesn’t inherently mean that different forms of energy will be able to balance the power grid; take a look at hydro power compared to fossil fuels like coal or oil and the disparity in output between the methods becomes clear. Karene is studying solar, which makes the most sense for the South and could make a difference if they’re able to optimize how well the cells can take in energy… but her real concern is carbon emissions, the ozone layer, how to deal with shifting carbon sinks, melting ice, deforestation, the ocean sucking up all that heat. The only real solution is going to be to slash demand, but that’s bad for profit margins.

Which is all very interesting, but that’s a point of disagreement – always has been, for Liv, because profit is the only way to get some of these fat cats at the top involved. No such thing as an altruistic businessman and in the absence of hefty regulations or taxation there needs to be a persuasive cha-ching moment for any mogul or billionaire before they'll invest in anything innovative.

What’s the benefit to them otherwise? Are they supposed to be compelled because it’s the right thing to do, or something? Please.

But she learned her lesson about sharing these thoughts out loud back in New York, and she loves the community gardening crew too much to jeopardize that set of relationships. Plus now her fridge is stocked with oranges and tomatoes and summer squash and four different kinds of leafy greens, with more on the way like eggplants and onions and melons, and she’s not an idiot. TA work pays well, but not so well that she can afford to buy this amount of produce every week. So Liv keeps this particular opinion to herself, and she’s fine with that. No need to show all her cards; and believing something isn’t the same as liking it.

Karene proves an excellent sounding board nonetheless – she patiently listens to Liv talking shit about the National Ignition Facility’s inefficiencies and how they should try to shoot hydrogen ions into boron and hydrogen gas or something. Or like friggin, accept the fact that there is no perfect solution because thermodynamic laws, and that accidentally creating a black hole in the course of routine beamtime is improbable according to all the current computer models – but also that the beauty of the scientific method is that unexpected results, when they occur, can provide the richest ground for new research imaginable.

So what if plasma generation occurs, or the reactions fizzle out days before you can identify that they happened? Replicable outcomes with an explainable process behind them are exciting for their ability to prove a theory; lack of predictability, though, that’s thrilling because it means there’s something you couldn’t account for entirely, and that can lead to a breakthrough. Now and then Liv runs to the bedroom and shuffles through the piles of shit on her desk to grab one of May’s letters, brandishing it with the same pride and excitement as if it were a published manuscript – some point in the conversation reminding her of something May had written to her, about technological advancements or modifications to capacitors or a recent newsletter from CERN.

Tegan complains regularly that she doesn’t understand any of it, and Liv gets frustrated constantly having to detour the train of thought she’s on so that she can give a refresher course on basic particle physics, so it’s nice to have a friend who can follow along. Especially one living with her.

Karene in turn tells Liv all about the finer points of biochem and advancements in fuels based on renewable energy sources – some cool shit going on with corn in the Midwest. But wouldn’t it also be neat if _oxygen_ could be produced as a by-product of artificial processes? After all, only one side of the problem is related to carbon, heat, and light – the other is related to how you turn that back into a breathable atmosphere and a healthy water cycle. CO2 scrubbers are cool, and all, but plants do many similar things naturally – the problem with plants is the length of time that it takes for them to grow, the nutrients that they require to be strong and healthy, inoculation against pests and parasites and blight… and so on and so forth.

More than one hangout back at Liv’s place ended with Tegan going to bed early, and Olivia reluctantly extracting herself from the conversation.

\--

Once Liv gets to the beach, she can’t stop going – it’s one of Tegan’s favourite things too, so when Liv discerns that Tegan’s feeling neglected she proposes a trip. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to the sound – susurrus, whisper, the way the water hisses as it paints over the sand. Clear, glowing turquoise some days. How under her feet are millions of worn bits of shell, pulverized to micrometres, getting stuck by water to her feet and up her legs. She’s wearing millennia, every time.

Tegan helps her pick out a swimsuit, since the one she brought with her doesn’t fit, and they manage to find one of those old-timey ones with the stripes, and Liv flings herself into the surf over and over even though sometimes the water is cold. She loves drying on a beach towel, all coconut sunscreen and salt-crystals evaporating to a dusting across her shoulders.

One time some frat boy dipshits give Liv a hard time for not shaving her legs. Tegan flips them off while hurling creative obscenities at them and Liv spikes the volleyball they’d lost back at their heads.

“_Freaks_,” shouts a guy with a phoney tan and frosted tips over his shoulder while they beat a hasty retreat.

“Suck it!”

“As if that’s an insult,” Tegan simmers. “I’ve been called worse.”

“I’ve _never_ felt normal. So fuck ‘em, right?”

“Ew, never.”

That gets both of them to laughing, even though a couple of younger folks next to them get up and move pointedly over, further down the beach and out of conversational earshot. The sun’s gently roasting every square inch – heat wavering just over the dunes. Tegan’s tracing shapes in the sand and Liv’s watching it happen, wonders how she’d figure out what percentage of this beach they’re on was alive in the same era as the gunk that lubricates and fuels the clunker of a car they got here in. What could happen if you could crack open inert materials and get at the energy locked up in _those_ atoms? Tegan speaks up, though, and Liv loses that track.

“Do you ever wonder about what guys like that are doing with themselves?”

“Pff. No, why would I? They’re static in the background of my day. I don’t give a shit about them and if I never see them again I’ll be happy. They’re like, combative NPCs or something. Or… what’s it, filler figures? Like background characters in animation.”

“I wish I could do that.”

“Do what?”

“Ignore their bullshit. They weren’t even yelling at me and I’m still seething about it.”

“Aww,” Liv reaches out an arm, wraps it around Tegan’s waist and rolls over to pull herself in. With her head in Tegan’s lap she grins up. “That’s sweet. Don’t feel like you need to get all protective of me, though. I’m tough. Besides, I can guarantee none of _them _are going to be cracking calculus for their day jobs. At least one of them is never gonna do better for himself than being an instructor for other meatheads at the gym. Definitely a juicer.”

“If you say so. I just… don’t know why they felt like taking time from their day to be assholes. They could just, not. You know?”

“I’m sure it gives them plenty of meaning and fulfillment. Wasting their one and precious life.”

“Mm.”

“Look,” Liv sits up, finally, because this isn’t working. Tegan’s more upset than she’d noticed. “They’re dicks. Okay? And besides, we’ve got more important situations and events to concern ourselves with. I _literally _just finished my comp exams and you’ve got yours in the spring… bigger fish to fry, right? At some point you gotta stop caring. It’s like… you hit your mid-twenties and you’re not dead yet for being gay like you got told you’d be, and you need to have a career going for you, and function somehow, and we’re supposed to let nobodies like that piss all over a perfect day like the one we’re having?”

Finally, at last, the dark look behind Tegan’s eyes starts to lessen a little bit. So the outing’s not ruined, and that’s a relief. Tending to someone else’s feelings always reminds her of when she dropped a linguistics class rather than fail out – all those syllable and consonant and word-parts drills swimming on the pages and refusing to be tamed by her mind, the same one that could wrangle advanced calculus when she was 14. Like that. Liv’s never quite had a knack for knowing what to say that’ll put someone at ease or demonstrate an appropriate level of care.

“You’re right.”

“As usual. Look, we’re going to make an impact. We’re going to be remembered, we’re going to be _worth_ something. Who gives a shit if we shave our legs, or fuck women, or refuse to ride on skateboards to get everywhere? We exist, and I’m not going to apologize for that, and we run in circles that are gonna stop climate change, or shift the consciousness of the mainstream. That’s what’s going to save the world. And part of that means letting it all hang out.”

Back in Pasadena Liv gives Tegan a ride around campus as the sun is setting. Tegan balances on the back of Liv’s bike while she pedals the two of them around before Tegan has to drive herself home and do some readings. Light spilling across the grass, and for the first time in a long time Liv feels a slim tether between her, this place, the opportunities unfolding before her. If nobody else, she convinced herself with that speech. Is it such a bad thing to let yourself be fuelled by spite? Liv doesn’t think so.

**February, 1995 **

Something’s sticking out of the mailbox for _once_, when Liv gets home from class.

Need a fast way to get a grad student’s attention? Send them a letter. If it’s not loan-related it might be cash from a relative, even though Olivia knows she’d never be so fortunate. None of them really _get _what she’s doing, and they’re saving their cheques for if she announces an engagement or something. Fat chance. Still, there’s only a handful of people this could be from.

She sees a Queens address and hurls her bag ahead of her into the living room, walking her bike just inside the hallway before kicking the door closed behind her. A thumb-tear along the letter seam later, and Olivia has May’s letter in hand.

Several sheets, written on in May’s neat, precise cursive. Front and back. Lucky her.

May started with the family stuff – updates about Peter, now 2 and a half or so, and about Ben, who’s taken up a low-cholesterol diet, good for him. Some requests for recipes that could assist on that particular mission for their family’s collective blood-vessel health – Olivia runs a quick rolodex flip through some she’s got memorized at this point, heavy on the olive oil, fish, or avocado – and some brief updates on May’s recent excursions with friends. A couple of allusions to local news that Olivia makes a mental note to follow up on later, maybe bug a librarian about for their copy of the Bugle or the Times.

Next, to the good bit – 4 solid pages of research that May’s been up to lately on polymeric fibre production, prefaced by an apology she can feel in May’s voice like an echo, the tone and cadence of it evident.

_Now, I’m aware that you’re up to your eyeballs in coursework and thesis writing, but I thought you might find some of these developments fascinating… read at your leisure, this is purely for entertainment. See? I won’t atrophy… _

Something falls out of the back pages as Olivia shuffles them to get a preview of May’s notes. Like an afterthought.

May’s written across the top margin, in the white parts bracketed all around by inky blackness. Tighter, cramped letters. Liv can picture May bending over a copy machine, somewhere, the light leaking out so her fingers dip into it, holding the lid of it closed. Later, May clipping away as much of the excess edges of the paper she can, so that they’re all small and neat and the space on the page isn’t wasted to dark, before slipping these few smaller sheets into the envelope with the rest.

_You mentioned that friend of yours is now a girlfriend, congratulations! It sounds like things are going well, but also that, in general, the move has been hard. You’re in the midpoint of your degree, or approaching it. That’s when it gets easier, from what I’ve heard –when you’re more established. I read this in the book you got me. I thought you might appreciate it._

Liv glances at the first few lines. Flips; on the next page, she reads,

_Also I wanted_  
_ to be able to love. And we all know_  
_ how that one goes,_  
_ don’t we?_

_Slowly. _

She stops. Returns to the start. This time, Olivia reads carefully the lines of this poem, and doesn’t make it past the third paragraph down before she feels her throat hot and barbed-wire-snarled, furious tightness behind her eyes.

Of all the times… there had been another book, some other author, and electric words in the student lounge. Sitting on the shitty, too-scratchy chairs with their polyester-wool rough woven base and the wood rough and all the varnish gone; May’s voice magnetic and smooth, Liv remembers, but not the words and not the _sound_.

What did May _sound_ like?

Or the smell and sound of New York, or the power Liv had felt shifting as a single particle in the wave that was a crowded downtown street, the energy sweeping her along, and the memory of May reading poetry to her, something about Manhattan being enough –

A key sounds in the lock. Liv scrapes the tips of her fingers along her lower lids, burning, and Tegan walks in with the spare that Liv wasn’t supposed to get cut according to policy; in this instant, Olivia wishes she hadn’t.

“Hey babe, happy V—” Tegan doesn’t finish. “Whoa – what’s happened? Are you okay?”

“Fine, I’m fine,” Liv says, her words clipped and hoarse; she turns her face away. She’s always hated the way her mouth twists when she’s trying to hold an outburst in and doesn’t want Tegan to see what that looks like on her. “Something stuck in my throat.”

“Oh… well, hey, let me get you some water. Are you ready to head out?”

“Where-?” Olivia is asking, even as she remembers what day it is. Everything in Tegan slackens, in that instant, like a cut powerline, and this is one of those _rules_ that she’s broken, isn’t it? Forgetting Valentine’s Day. She’d meant to get flowers or something. Tegan’s made a reservation at the restaurant owned by one of the trendy gay couples who flies slightly under the radar by passing it off as a business partnership. There’s a drag show after. It was going to be a nice night. “Yeah. Of course. Just give me a second.”

She sees Tegan’s eyes scrape heavy and slow over the papers clutched in her hand too tight, and Liv forces herself to put them casually up on the counter.

“Is that your friend again?”

“My _married_ friend. Yeah.”

Tegan opens the cupboard closest to Liv’s head, reaching up and pulling out a glass. Her eyes are on the letter though, and the poetry’s on top. “She’s sending you things like that, now?”

“I’ll read it to you later if you like.”

“No thanks. It’s derivative.”

“It’s Mary Oliver.”

“She’s overrated. I’ve read her stuff.”

Now the tap is on, the sound filling the space where Liv could be talking – but she’s still swallowing down the rawness in her throat, trying to chant to herself that this is the last thing in the world to fight back on right now. She’s going to spend the rest of the night making up to Tegan; if they argue right now over her correspondence with May too, now, again, she suspects a full-on meltdown will occur. It’s going to come off as insincere, but Liv tries to be conciliatory anyways. As much as she can stand to be.

“I should have left myself a reminder, or something. Sticky notes plastered all over every surface... I'll be serious. Sorry. Do you want to stay in instead?”

Tegan hands over the cup, letting the cupboard door bang shut – a too-loud sound. Maybe it was intentional, maybe not. Liv drinks it down too fast, feeling the cold from the tap like it’s splashing over her ribcage.

“You know what? No. It’s fine.” A tight smile. “It’s fine. Let’s just go out for dinner anyways, right? I’ll give you some time to freshen up, and we can head out. Do you want me to go wait at the car? I didn’t plug the meter cause I thought we’d be leaving right away.”

Liv just nods. She doesn’t trust herself to speak.

**April, 1995 **

Olivia had expected many things from this conversation: to revisit the frequency with which they saw each other; to adjust the budget for Tegan’s gas money; to negotiate, somehow. But instead, with sunspots swimming in her vision, and sand caked to the bottom of her feet, and a bike that she’s been hauling with her the past few uncomfortably quiet miles, Liv realizes that Tegan’s breaking up with her.

“Look… it goes beyond the fact that I don’t think we have enough in common to stand on,” she’s saying. “It’s also this… person you keep getting mail from. Whoever you’re hung up on, I hope you get some closure with her. But I think it’s fairer to you – and to me – if we just keep things at friends until you get to that point. Frankly, I deserve better. Which is to say you do too.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want this,” Liv protests, but Tegan raises a hand and speaks firmly even though she has to cough a little, like there’s something stuck in her throat.

“No, I know. That just doesn’t help, right now, with the problems we’re having.”

Something goes cold and razor-edged inside her. “What _problems_? Since when have you ever brought up any _problems_?”

“I’ve been _trying_. All those times I told you I was feeling left out? Or whether we could talk about where you saw this going?”

“And I told you _I didn’t know_.”

“It’s been almost two years! That’s a damn long time to go on halfways and maybes! You wouldn’t even call me your girlfriend until a couple months ago, Christ…”

“Two years means jack shit. Do you have any idea how insignificant that amount of time is in the grand scheme of things?” 

“I’m not talking about the grand scheme of things, I’m talking about _us._ Right here, right now, and what I thought could happen in the next couple of decades. Not everyone exists on an accelerated timeline – do you ever let yourself stop moving and do some planning, beyond the next thing you decide is best for your goals? I’ve been _nothing _but clear with you about what I wanted, Liv!”

“Were you?” Liv retaliates, “Because I'm getting a different impression entirely. I told you at the _start _that I was planning to graduate and get out. What, did you think I wasn’t serious? That I’d been _lying? _Or did you get tired of fucking me, or using me for how ‘interesting’ you supposedly find me, just because I don’t have an answer to the question ‘where do you see yourself in five years’?”

“Wow. Fuck you. Are you really as self-absorbed as you’re coming across right now? You know, I’m graduating, or did you forget about that? I wouldn’t put it past you. That means I’m leaving, unless I had a really good reason to stay! You’re making a _scene_, Olivia!”

“Well this _hurts_,” screams Olivia, and Tegan flinches. “It doesn’t matter what you _wanted, _now you’ve _got_ a fight!”

“No,” says Tegan, stepping back and shaking her head. “I know. You’ve made that clear. You’re gonna stay stuck in this lifestyle forever and I used to feel bad for you but, fuck, not anymore. Congrats. Hope it makes you happy. I should have known you couldn’t be an adult about this.”

“You know what would have been _adult,_ Tegan? Breaking up with me way fucking sooner if you were so pissed off!”

“Screw you!” Tegan shouts, before spinning on her heel and marching back the way they came, towards where her car is parked, ignoring the people around them on the beach. Oblivious to them staring.

“_You wish!” _

But Tegan isn’t turning around, which is so _fucking infuriating _that Liv spins around and kicks her bike hard enough that it clatters with a sick sound of metal-on-stone against the short retaining wall she leaned it up against. When she picks it up, ignoring the dog barking and straining against its leash in her direction and the tweens pointing up at her, the chain has fallen off and she has to spend the next few minutes setting it right. The whole arduous sweaty ride home she’s fuming, pushing too hard despite the fact that there’s a suspicious wobble to the front tire that wasn’t there before.

She gets on campus and books it to the far end where she knows some bike racks are that’re out of view of most sightlines. Chains the old bike up, serviceable until it wasn’t, finds one that isn’t affixed properly to anything, heaves it up and over, knocking it against some of the other bikes carelessly so that they tilt and lean, toppling like dominos.

It even has gear shifts. Sucker’s loss. Whoever they are they’re unlucky enough to have caught her on a bad day.

Liv rips across the grass as furiously as she can, a stitch knit hard and throbbing through her ribs so badly, hoping that she can claim the exertion is what’s pricking at the corners of her eyes.

\--

The confrontation from Karene happens the next evening, partway through Liv slapping enamel paint against the frame of the new-to-her bike toppled against a stack of newspapers on the floor. All the noise covers up the sound of her keys in the lock, the door opening. Some cassette she put together, all Patti Smith and Annie Lennox and others in that vein, the thing she’s always played after another bad breakup. Come full circle. As usual. 

“Uh oh.”

“Don’t.”

“Do I even wanna know?”

The brush slaps a little too hard against the crossbar’s joint and Liv gets a tiny spray of paint across her face and onto her glasses. “_Shit. _No, Karene, and I don’t especially care to go into the particulars of why my ex-girlfriend is a sanctimonious, demanding jerk who never bothered to ask me what my career track even looked like, ignored me every time I tried to explain, and dumped me when she finally internalized what it’d involve!”

“Wow. I’m pretty sure that actually counts as the particulars.”

“Dating _sucks_. I renounce it! No more distractions, no more _commitments, _I’m going to get my degree and stick to no-strings fuck buddies and that’s it!”

“S’long as you’re quiet about it when you have someone over.”

“_Ughhhh._” Liv flings the brush to the floor; Karene makes a noise of protest as some paint nearly spatters onto the carpet. She yanks a sleeve up over her wrist and thumb, uses the fabric to try and scrub away what got on her glasses lens and only managing to smear it a little. “Are you going to give me some lecture about how these kinds of things go both ways and it’s not entirely her fault? Because I’m not in the fucking mood.”

“No, because I’m the one that’s gotta live with you until our contracts are up. And I dunno about you but I’m not willing to try and find another roommate to tolerate half as much as we tolerate each other.”

“That’s refreshingly pragmatic.”

“Plus I didn’t really like her. She kept eating the tomatoes at the garden when she thought none of us were looking, and she never really talked to me unless she wanted Jamal to listen to one of her other friends’ demos. No problem with that, except she was always fronting some other reason to hit me up.”

Liv feels a sneer creep across her face. “Yeah, that sounds like her. Happy enough to hear me out when she wanted something from me, but I guess that got old.”

“Come on.”

“What?”

Karene hasn’t bothered to step out of her sandals yet, and responds by hurling Liv’s at her face so she has to fumble to catch them. “I’m taking you out. You need something deep fried and doused in hot sauce in you; you look like you haven’t eaten all day. You can finish working on your stolen bike later.”

“Clearly I’ve underestimated you.”

“Quit fuckin’ doing that, you’ll embarrass yourself.” She throws something else and Liv barely catches it, _slap_, between her palms. “This too. Don’t slack on the mailbox, do you think bikes’re the only thing that get stolen around here?”

The package is soft. It crinkles lightly, when Liv presses on it, the plastic lining. Whatever it is, it’s from May. But Karene slaps a hand against the door frame, and there’s a growl in Liv’s stomach – pain equally hunger and nausea, from how little she’s eaten today and too much coffee – so she decides to wait.

Liv tosses it onto a corner of the couch before running out.

* * *

**March 6th, 1995**

Strange how people can experience the same event but disagree on the meaning.

I go to a market, I find a scarf, my husband takes some bills out of his wallet to help pay for it. What a lovely gift to his wife!

I got to a market, find a scarf, he helps pay, someone overhears me mention whether she’ll like it, am I talking about family? Am I worried whether she’ll like it, or hoping that she will, or cheaping out on a present?

If the husband knows, and there is no jealousy, but there is also no breach of the promises they made each other, would someone still think it was cheating?

I found one that was perfect for Liv today, but for whatever reason I spent minutes agonizing over it – would she use it in California? Was it strange that we sent so many things to one another? Who was this imagined audience, whose opinions I was so concerned with – Liv’s girlfriend, strangers? The only one who I know understands is Ben, and I suppose he is the only one I really need to be worried about… but still. I remember how our classmates used to talk. Ben knows that I feel strangely about this, that I find this a difficult balance to keep - and he helps pay for things sometimes because then it becomes a gift from both of us, even if I’m the only one who knows it. Would people understand, if they had access to that.

Still I find something perfect for her, and I send it along.

He asked me, curious, what my friendship with her means to me. I couldn’t explain well, except that I see something in her that wasn’t possible for me. 

When he lost his brother and our sister-in-law, I had to hold him together, and Liv kept me together.

\--

**June 18th, 1995**

9 years – so much time to go on. Longer that we’ve known each other, but sometimes people act like it’s only the time you’ve been married that actually counts. Ben says he loves my laugh most of all, always has, from when he first heard it, just before we started dating. I get to see him smiling for reasons I never thought I would – he throws Peter up into the air, catches him, and we both hear the delight in that kid’s response. The look on Ben’s face! There’s always a touch of disbelieving irony, but it’s a thin veneer over some deep pride. We’ve learned, together. 

I swear I know every line of his face. And the time keeps going faster – if it wasn’t for this I wouldn’t remember what happened last week, some days, let alone a month ago, or a year. Do we surprise each other, sometimes? Looking at each other, seeing how we’ve changed?

Yet everytime I catch him staring, he’s smiling.

\--

**February 4th, 1996**

“What remains constant, regardless of an independent observer?”

<strike>Conversation a doppler</strike>  
Loop stitch, knit one, purl two, cross  
over the needle  
conversation sounding into the other  
waiting to receive what comes  
back; whole cloth  
to see what we’ll make of it  
<strike>something fixed in the thread</strike>

I should stick to reading poetry, maybe…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More profound thanks to Zes and C for the Caltech details, SPECIFICALLY to Zes for coming up with the AU-Furbies-and-Electrified-Door situation. 
> 
> Please do yourselves a favour and look up some of the old Caltech Ditch Day stories - one time some freshmen got mad at a stack and chained the upper year student responsible to a tree. Another time some students were mad at the prize that they got, and used a Van De Graaf machine to plaster the dude's room with Styrofoam pellets. This stuff is wild and delightful. I'm not making up the part about the steel and concrete.
> 
> Oh, and the thing about shooting hydrogen atoms into boron, etc., is from a clip on Jonathon Van Ness's Instagram where he was talking to Bill Nye the Science Guy. 
> 
> The poem included in the mail is _Dogfish_ by Mary Oliver.


	5. Transcript – Interview 3.0

**[Transcript begins]**

**03/21/2019 13:15 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**The following is excerpted for viewing by individuals with clearance up to and including security levels 5. **

**If level 6 through 7, consult the following folder for an edition without redactions: 0012459-OO-2019. **

**Timestamp: 13:15 pm **

**Interviewer:** Last time we covered your research and a few of your... side projects. Now we need to discuss the particulars of your alliance with Kingpin. At what point did you involve Wilson Fisk?

**Octavius:** He contacted me.

**Interviewer:** Oh?

**Octavius:** I’m a researcher first, and a heavy-hitter in my field. Do you think I could afford people finding out about my alter-ego? I may have had a pseudonym by then, but I didn’t come up with it. Someone at the Bugle thought they were being clever – Fisk cared enough to find out what my actual name was. Through an information broker, I assume, and he set up the meeting through at least four other channels before I ever set eyes on him in person. 

**Interviewer:** What were your initial impressions?

**Octavius:** My... impressions? Have you seen the man?

**Interviewer:** Did he intimidate you?

**Octavius:** I figured out how to handle him pretty quickly.

**Timestamp: 13:53 pm **

**Octavius:** Sure. Fine. He recruited me – once the contracts were signed he made it abundantly clear what the consequences would be for a breach of terms, above and beyond reputational damages. I thought it was overkill, but he needs to feel important. 

**Interviewer:** Were you aware of what he was trying to accomplish?

**Octavius:** Obviously.

**Interviewer:** Did you ever disillusion him about the projected success rate?

**Octavius:** Incredible though I’m sure it must seem, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to let him know that what he was describing fell more into the range of science fiction than actual science. Remember me telling you about annihilation? I always figured something like that was likely, pulling matter in from other universes. Physics probably works differently in the elsewhere. None of our initial experiments contradicted that hypothesis. Would you want to tell an emotionally compromised Kingpin that, though? No one’s that stupid.

**Interviewer:** So you didn’t believe that he would ever get to see his family.

**Octavius:** I figured he was wrong. I figured what he wanted was a handy pipe-dream that would permit me to have several years of fully-funded research, a completed supercollider, and minimal interference in the process. We’d had limited success with inanimate objects making it over to our side – strange multiples – but nothing with invertebrates, let alone more complex organisms.

I’d assumed from our results that people would be impossible to get a stable enough lock on; at what point does a duplicate of yourself cease to be you? We’re regenerating cells all the time. The makeup of your being will be different depending on if you eat... I don’t know, a ham versus a turkey sandwich. Different nutrients entering your system, being disassembled and reassembled as completely different chemical compositions.

Imagine my surprise when multiple inter-dimensional travellers fell into my lap less than a week after the inaugural test.

**Interviewer:** Peter B. Parker and the rest of them. So the question becomes, what came next?

**Octavius:** Priority was given to running the experiment as many times as I could. Wouldn’t you? The countdown had begun – Fisk breathing down my neck and a bunch of Spider-people to concern myself with. I had the opportunity to solve two of my primary research questions, the ones guiding several million dollars’ worth of work, and begin investigating a third.

**Interviewer:** Which was?

**Octavius:** When you get the opportunity to go visit alternate dimensions, don’t you want to get there in one piece and _remain _that way? I told you this in our first interview together. Keep up.

**Timestamp: 14:15 pm **

**Octavius: **I didn’t talk to her for a while, thanks to what was going on with Fisk among other factors. It lasted a year, I think? At least. I kind of lost track, at the time. If she decides she wants nothing to do with me when this is all over, fine. I’ll... well, I won’t get over it, obviously, but I’ll get out of this universe. It’ll be easier for both of us. But that’s her call, isn’t it?

**Interviewer: **So you’ve both been unaffected by this process [referring to the interviews]?

**Octavius: **[grins] what do you honestly think the answer to that is going to be?

**Interviewer: **You tell me.

**Octavius: **There’s nothing I’ve said to you that May Parker hasn’t already heard, not where November 2018 is concerned. Or Miles Morales. Or even Peter B. Parker.

**Interviewer: **What about outside that time-frame?

**Octavius: **Have you talked to Nick Fury yet? ... Ah, from that face I’m guessing it’s in process, right? Official channels. Don’t have patience for them. You already know that was my vice, right?


	6. To push the boundaries for the benefit of all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A longitudinal, multimedia study of nearly a decade of early-career professional development. Sampled are numerous artifacts, anecdotes, and digital remnants which acted as the main source of data for analysis.  
Or:  
Olivia remembers why she doesn't tend to go home to visit family; a sexist jerk at a conference faces some consequences; notes related to Olivia's mid-career habits are examined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read the updated tags before reading. Note: The emails can be scrolled through using the bar that appears on the side of the container; some content will be missed if not scrolled through. Things display a little strangely on mobile but you can still manipulate the emails!

Applied Physics Seminar Series Spring 1997

**A theoretical proof of cosmic ray “wrangling” for gravitron path detection**

Olivia Octavius1, Maria Kostinovich1,2, Matthias Quimby3, Ahmed Sarin4, Brandon Lukas1, Steve Nam2.

Department of Applied Physics and Material Science, California Institute of Technology1, Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology2,Department of Aerospace, California Institute of Technology3, Department of Computing and Mathematical Science, California Institute of Technology 4.

** _Abstract _ **

Modern physics indicates that approximately 95% of our universe is comprised of dark energy and dark matter; however, heavier particles such as Z- or W-particles are nearly impossible to detect. An experiment with the potential to succeed at this goal has energy demands exceeding the ability of any existing accelerator to match. However, cosmic rays regularly match or surpass these demands.

No instrument to date has the capacity to detect, observe, or harness the energy potential inherent to cosmic radiation. The researchers offer a theoretical proof of a method for replicating the conditions under which cosmic radiation is produced through boosting the electromagnets and capacitors in existing accelerators. Further, if this step can be achieved, the researchers offer a secondary mathematical proof by which existing sensors could be enhanced and calibrated in order to detect what they term “absence pathways”. Such trails may indicate the presence of extra dimensions into which gravitrons and similar heavy particles are escaping. This work aims to build on existing models of applied physics, and further research is proposed for CERN in a future rotation, on completion of the LHC. 

** _Biography _ **

Olivia Octavius is an Applied Physics PhD candidate expecting to graduate in 1998, and studying in the lab of Dr. Maria Kostinovich. She obtained her Masters in Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics from Columbia University in 1993. Olivia’s areas of research include extra-dimensional spaces, Kaluza-Klein states, and “missing energy” during high-energy particle collisions.

\--

**July, 1998 **

Liv wishes she could go back to commencement already – is she seriously missing California? This is what she’s become. The voices of her Mom and yia-yia echo through the entire terminal, other passengers swivelling their heads around to look.

“_Olivia!_ Ya sou, it’s been _so long_, you have not visited your family in _years_, we have almost forgotten your face! What are you wearing – the pattern, it looks like the upholstery we use on our diner booths, ach!”

“You are not bringing a movie star home with you? I wanted to meet Leonardo.”

“It’s good to see you, but Hollywood stars tend not to wander around the grounds of a University, yia-yia.” Liv grudgingly leans in for a hug, winces as she wonders whether the kisses planted enthusiastically on each cheek are going to leave smudges of lipstick. Her dad pulls her in for a gruff single-armed hug. “And I was back here for Christmas.”

“Ba, it feels like longer.”

“I told you, grad school was going to take up all my time–”

“Halfway across the country you’ve gone, I am missing the part where you could not find a decent school here in-state to attend!”

“How did your dissertation go, what did my money go towards if you are not a medical doctor?” Her father asks, keen-eyed and direct. “Are you truly going to Switzerland? What is wrong with Greece?”

She wonders if he’s still annoyed at all the times she was issued conduct warnings for being disruptive, back when she was doing her Masters. “There are no particle accelerators in Greece, dad, that’s why – and can we not talk about student debt right now, I _literally _just got off the plane!”

“You will tell us on the way to cousin Lena’s.”

“_Lena’s-_?! It’s a full day’s flight – mom, I’m not ready to have tiny children hanging off my arms!”

“But you have finished, you are home, we are going to throw a celebration! Not tonight, of course, but everyone didn’t want to wait, we all wanted to see you,” and her mom continues chattering while her dad hails their driver.

Liv breathes in deep through her nose and tries to summon up the warm-ish feelings she was having on the way over here.

\--

Of course the food comes from one of the diners. That’s how her dad made a name for himself, how most of the family got their start once they arrived. After they got big enough to have franchisees, they knew they’d really made it; the rest was hard work, smart investments, and lucky tax breaks, or so Olivia’s dad claims. She’s always had a problem with the extended family’s lingering proclivity for endlessly-reused empty yogurt containers as Tupperware as it pairs to their lack of environmentalism – would it kill them to source more local ingredients? – but they often brush her off. This is, after all, America.

The diner doesn’t carry the family name, or anything, but home-cooking is reserved for daily life and _really _special occasions – extra-special takeout is reserved for second-tier gatherings, like this one that Olivia wasn’t expecting to have to cope with so immediately. Sound pours from Lena’s house as the door opens onto the stoop, light spilling out onto the lawn and up onto the angles of her face; so does the impression of dozens of people, all immediately reaching hands out to yank her into the house and pass her along through a gauntlet of grinning, flushed faces. 

“Olivia! You’re on the West Coast, all those rich men and you don’t even bother coming home with a hunk on your arm? What gives?”

“Is it Doctor Octavius now? I have something on my arm I want you to look at!”

“No, uncle Kostos, she’s not _that _kind of doctor.”

“The spanakopita are getting cold, we had to wait so long for you-”

“What on earth have you done with your hair? Is that dye?”

“Aunty _Liv_, did you bringmea present?”

Liv shoots a dagger glance at her mom as a small boy with tight curly hair launches himself and clings to her leg. “No, Adrian, I couldn’t bring you a present.”

“Why not?!_” _

“Because they wouldn’t let me bring a plasmoid slime monster on the plane, said it was too gooey.”

“Aw, man!”

“Adrian, go help your brother set up the table.”

Olivia is swept into a tight hug by someone she doesn’t quite catch in her peripheral vision, but the baby-powder scent and light tang of sweat and salt and something herbaceous is enough to tell her who it is. “Lena, did you invite the whole extended bunch?”

“Sorry, Liv, you know how it is once the grapevine gets going, _mmm _it’s good to see you!” Lena tightens the hug before letting go, her green eyes sparking and a grin pulling at the corners of her mouth. “What are your requests for tomorrow? I’ve already bought, like, three whole chickens and nearly cleared out the deli of their fresh feta, they looked like they wanted to _strangle_ me!”

Liv stifles a yawn against the back of a hand, rubs at the corners of her eyes. “Uh, as many salads as you can get? I’ll have to pass on the chicken, California solidified the vegetarianism. Please tell me you have coffee.”

Olivia’s grandma breaks in, even though she’s now squashed on a couch between another of Liv’s cousins holding a baby and two of the various husbands represented.

“Vegetarian? But I am making you lamb!”

“_No_, yia-yia, I’m sorry, I can’t eat your lamb!”

“There will be nothing wrong with it!”

So it goes.

\--

A means of escape presents itself for the Fourth of July, in the evening. There’s an appointed meeting spot selected that Liv highlights on her map of downtown so she can’t possibly pick the wrong café, and she arrives a good thirty minutes in advance, just as golden hour begins. Her mouth is dry no matter how much water she drinks, and _Hyperspace _isn’t holding her attention. She orders an iced coffee. The ice gives her brain-freeze, which isn’t enough to stop her cracking the cubes between her teeth and devouring them.

She almost doesn’t recognize May, what with the short-bobbed haircut (that’s new) but then her face turns and Liv jostles everything on the table with how quickly she gets up. Brief alarm in May’s eyes – oh, she’s got the start of crow’s feet, laughter lines – replaced by nothing but _warmth_.

“It’s good to see you, Liv,” she’s saying, as Ben steps up behind her holding the hand of a tiny, blonde-haired human being.

“You too,” Liv manages.

They’re going to check out one of the nearby festivals after this, and don’t want to get separated, so would Liv mind if Ben and Peter tag along for part of the way? They’ll find a place to sit in the park while the boys go looking for frogs and fish in the pond. Give them a chance to catch up. Liv’s free to join if she wants afterwards (maybe for a bit, gotta get back to the family at some point). Some small talk after that; Ben’s work, how’s Peter? He’s a smart kid, got a bug-catching kit, loves building things with Lego. At one point he asks Olivia if she’s a witch, and she says “I’m a scientist, which is even_ better_,” and his eyes go wide.

They end up on a bench together, looking out over a stand of willows, oaks, maples, sycamore. May squeezes Ben’s hand before he strides away, scooping Peter up as he goes and depositing him up on his shoulders, the boy laughing.

Liv feels her fingers are woven together too tightly, tingling starting up in the tips; she relaxes her grip and settles for picking at her cuticles instead. So much to say and nowhere to begin. People keep walking past them, decked out in red, white, blue, carrying tiny flags or draping enormous ones over their shoulders like capes.

May initiates – how was it, the ceremony? Congratulations, Doctor Octavius.

“Mom and Dad came out,” she hears herself saying at some point. “But insisted on flying me out here, since the rest of the family couldn’t make it. I think they needed an excuse to get together more than anything, and the prospect of me leaving for several months overseas was impetus enough.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It’s a bit suffocating. Thanks for the excuse to get away.”

“Anytime,” May smiles. “I’ve missed you.”

“What about you?” counters Liv, deflecting a little, bending the course of this particular conversation. So May talks about spending long hours at the library, about using her alumni card at Columbia and taking Peter with her – some of the libraries have children’s books, things like that. But Peter is a quiet kid, and the librarians let him explore sometimes. Let him stamp the insert-cards with the due date for his Aunt May when she checks books out. She’ll have more free time to herself once Peter starts Kindergarten. Ben is working hard, has been in grief counselling – thank goodness for the benefits he has.

They don’t talk about the gifts, or the letters.

Liv’s hands are still twisted in her lap, which she doesn’t realize until May reaches over and gently takes one.

“I want to hear all about Switzerland. Write to me, okay? It can be lonely, overseas. And when you’re back, come and visit anytime,” she says. “You’re always welcome.” 

Liv finds herself nodding, but is already thinking about how she likely can’t afford to. It’s easier to want something from a distance – once she’s up close with it again, the shape of it changes.

\--

Olivia stays for the neighbourhood fireworks. Joins May in explaining why each has a different colour, how the explosions are controlled to produce blooms of different sizes, shapes, and motion pathways.

She shakes Ben’s hand before leaving, hugs May, catches the subway towards home. The whole way to her stop Liv leans her head against the window, listening to the screech and whine of the cars through the tunnels. She wishes she could push it faster. Close her eyes and wake up sometime further down, when she’s skipped the work and the wait and the want that the next few years are going to bring.

\--

Liv refuses the offer of another chauffeured ride back to the airport a couple days later, claiming a desire to utilize the local carpool network instead and save on the round-trip. She’s lucky she made the call the night before and stipulated that her flight left in the afternoon, she thinks, because the net result is another family gathering. It spontaneously manifests the following morning for breakfast, this time at the far more spacious dining room of her parent’s place; Liv blearily wakes up in bed to the sound of at least five people arriving. It’s the start of an onslaught of relatives. An hour goes by with nothing more than a croissant eaten as each family member insists in turn on grabbing her, ostensibly to wish her farewell.

When she wrests herself away to the buffet table, it's a disappointment. There’s bacon, and cousin Danny wolfing down sliced ham, and uncles Alex and Nikolas decide they’re going to have a contest of how many sausage links they can consecutively eat, which Liv would make an inappropriate joke about if there weren’t so many children in the room. Remind her how she’s supposed to feign any sort of proclivity towards aunt-hood, again? The only protein source she can get here is _egg_.

The extended goodbyes continue. No, there are no prospects for her marriage – she notices yia-yia eyeing her carefully and closely the whole time she’s being badgered. No, she’s not planning to move back to New York immediately, as she had initially sworn she would – things have changed, there may be work waiting for her once she’s back from the internship at CERN. No, sorry Adrien, she doesn’t have time for an epic Nerf fight while wearing Moon Shoes, try her next time she’s in town.

“Always you are gone too soon!” Liv’s mother sniffles, dabbing at her eyes.

“I’m just going back to Pasadena, I promise I’ll write,” mutters Liv in response, though she pats her mom’s head as she’s engulfed in another hug, rocked back and forth.

“Ach, you say so. Me, I think all of your writing gets eaten up by your work and there is none left for your poor mama.”

“You’re not too far off. I’ll send you some of my publications if you want.”

“Would I understand them?”

“Probably not.”

“Send them anyways, I will pass them around the family.”

“Make us proud,” is all her dad says. She nods, maybe a little curtly, then takes a deep breath as she tugs her suitcase out the door and onto the front step.

“Bye, all!” Olivia calls out. There’s a veritable choral response back.

Her yia-yia carefully picks her way to the front of the crowd, and suddenly Liv is struck by how tiny she looks, surrounded by all these other people.

“You take care not to get too attached to Europe, my Olivia” she says brightly. “Go to Greece if you can, while you are there. There is an island you would love, I think.”

And then she winks.

Huh.

As the door closes, she hears a bewildered voice asking what’s so great about Crete.

\--

**2002**

**14th Conference on Particle Physics, May 2002**

Dr. Olivia Octavius  
Affiliation: California Institute of Technology  
PRESENTER and ATTENDEE

\--

The following is a neatly categorized list of functions related to social cohesion observed at a post-conference reception, coded inductively, with examples provided in the immediate aftermath:

  1. _Professional development_: exchange of data; note-taking on current insights or potential future projects; CV and resume-building activities, such as participation in workshops or presentation of research (as posters, panels, break-out sessions or otherwise); practicing of soft-skills.
  2. _Networking_: collection of contact information and/or business cards; introductions between scholars and colleagues; efforts to become involved in the professional community of study; continuation of conversations begun earlier.
  3. _Stress relief and blowing-off-of-steam_: consumption of food and/or alcohol; seeking of localized leisure experiences or entertainment; enjoyment of amenities and/or luxuries; careful adherence to expense limitations, as they’ve been imposed by institutional budgets and reimbursement schemes.
  4. _Sexual or romantic overtures: _what it says on the tin.
  5. _Confrontation of insecurities: _The essential questions that linger despite everyone’s best efforts to eliminate them – do they like me? Am I interesting, intelligent, confident enough? Are people taking me, my work, or my credentials seriously? Are these weighted categories, and is the consideration granted to each variable a matter of degree? Do I even give a shit? 

\--

The above is what Olivia Octavius works through by herself as she polishes off the third cocktail of the evening. Someone from her lab whose name she’s forgotten passed off his drink tickets, so Liv’s been treating herself – it’s dirty, it’s got good briny olives, and it sharpens the light while softening the room.

Olivia feels on top of the world - she’s been circulating the room and concentrating her efforts in the first couple of categories, talking to lab directors, swapping business cards or data-drives with key publications on them. This conference is her first back in North America since she got back from Europe, so it felt like a debut of sorts, and so far? Not bad!

People don’t recognize her name – yet – but as soon as she mentions Geneva they perk their ears up and pay closer attention. Her panel went well, she’s got a small jotter notepad of questions and observations raised by other scientists in the audience to follow up on later in her hotel room, and one of the directors at Fermilab gave her a card and told her to reach out to him about one of their more advanced sets of projects. And, she ran into an old professor of hers from Caltech - he's since shifted careers and become the director of a private organization, one that has satellite locations in Denver, Houston, New York; Alchemax, he says, doing really interesting things with AI, robotics, applied physics, synchotrons. He invites her to come take a tour, the next time her work brings her to New York. She wasn't sure when that'll be, exactly, but promised to follow up with him on that. 

The hotel ballroom is packed with people, clustering by their research interests or because this conference is the sole opportunity to see old industry friends. Of course, there’s also the matter of scientists trying to get some while the getting’s good over tiny hors d'oeuvres and platters of sushi, yakitori, crisp bits of tempura vegetable. That always makes for some good people-watching; she can see Brandon on the other side of the room, probably using his line about charm quarks, and failing in the attempt. She settles near to Taylor and Priya, both of them nuclear physicists, and is half-listening to them chatter about their contributions to the breakout sessions, which is why at first she doesn’t notice what’s going on with Matthias at the bar.

He’s a good kid. Matthias was part of the lab that helped build her thesis, which is why she kept in touch. Was having trouble getting post-doc work, so Olivia hired him on as a Research Associate – why not, right? Saved her some time because she already knew his skillset, and it meant he could contribute to some of the session presentations today, pad out his CV a little.

Except Matthias makes emphatic eye-contact with her over the shoulder of a man making some very large gestures, and Olivia quirks an eyebrow. She shovels the last bite of a mini-quiche into her mouth and sets off without excusing herself, shoving her hands in the pocket of her long cardigan as she goes.

“… And some really fascinating developments,” the man is asking, “wouldn’t you say? I noted your work appears in the conference proceedings, which is quite an accomplishment at this stage in your career! And is it true that you were at CERN? You must have gotten the tour of the Hadron Collider in-progress, I’m assuming, so was it, as they said, like looking into the eye of God?”

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Matthias replies, pointing towards her as she approaches. “That’s O. Octavius, I’m just an Associate. I only gave the presentation, I’m not the lead…”

“Oh?” Slick guy that Matthias been talking to, isn’t it? Hair done back and suit neat. Meanwhile, there are some folks from her lab who she’s seen in Grateful Dead t-shirts as soon as the occasion for formality has passed, and Liv can’t wait to rejoin their ranks. As he turns, Liv can see ruddiness along the nose, sharp cheekbones. “Oh. I wasn’t expecting _that_.”

“I prefer _her_,” Liv replies smoothly, but dismay pings immediately. “Though I’m glad that you met my colleague already.”

His eyebrows ascend and she feels him looking her up and down before the grin re-assembles itself onto his face, maybe a little sheepish.

“Pleasure. I’m Dr. Brad Hammond – you must be Dr. Octavius.”

“I’m just… gonna go get more food,” says Matthias, inching away. _Sorry_, he mouths, and Olivia sticks her hand out to shake Brad’s – he squeezes too tightly and she shakes out her fingers in the aftermath. Brad doesn’t notice.

“Truly though, fascinating stuff! I’m really impressed at the depth of the project, and even more so after learning that you’re…”

“So young?”

“… Sure.”

“Maybe you’re working in an antiquated lab. Was there anything you wanted to ask me about? Matthias is capable, but if you were expecting to talk to the first author on the manuscript, that’s me.”

“I hardly think Harvard is _antiquated _– just _cultured_. Is your first name Olive?”

“Olivia.”

“Ah, gotcha. Excuse my mishap with the attributions. You understand, of course, it’s just there’re so few women in the field.”

Dismay gives way to irritation – wow, he just came right out and said that, but also… is he blind, or just stupid? Doesn’t he see how many are here? She sees him half-swivel towards the bar, slapping cash on the surface since he’s clearly burned through the conference drink tickets already. One-handed, he undoes the button on his tailored suit-jacket so it can fall open. He leans back, elbow resting on the bar-top, angles the spread of himself in her direction – it takes all her effort not to roll her eyes.

A whiskey back in his hand, he continues: “Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

He shrugs, tossing back a neat swallow. “Suit yourself. At any rate, I’d have to get my notes back in my room from the day before I could keep any questions in mind… would you humor that?”

Another full-body scan. She wishes that she hadn’t worn the black pantsuit – she looks _good _in it, but at this point that might be a problem. Maybe there’s still time to salvage this. “You know, I don’t think so, but I could take your card.”

He reaches into his pocket, gives her a one from a creamy-papered stack held together with a silver clip – isn’t that funny, she must have run out of hers already, that’s too bad – and she returns to Taylor and Priya, determined to brush this whole encounter off. When she glances back, he’s still staring after her; once their eyes connect, he grins.

She smiles back, tight-lipped, and engrosses herself again. What an ass.

\--

Olivia would have put the whole affair out of her mind and moved on, except for what happens when the evening winds down and she’s heading back to her room. She doesn’t end up in an elevator with the guy or anything like that, because she takes the stairs whenever possible, but from a few floors above her she recognizes Brad’s voice echoing through along with at least two other men. And she wouldn’t care, except:

“…Struck out with Octavius, I think, which is a shame – she had that look about her, that uptight kind of manner – and you just want to, _unf_, see what she’d look like taken apart, know what I mean?”

She stops her ascent, immediately flattens against the wall – there’s a tang in her mouth that wasn’t there before, and it’s like a sick live-wire’s taken to her blood.

“I dunno,” comes a disembodied reply. “She’s not my type.”

“Too scrawny to get you going?”

“Something about her reads wrong to me.”

“Think she’s a lez?”

Liv’s heard enough. Bile’s in her throat and her hands are clenched into fists, doesn’t know when that happened, but she clatters up one more flight to get to the door, hearing the men shush each other awkwardly at the sound.

She pushes herself through the halls too fast, finds the stairwell on the other end so she can finish the ascent to her room where she’ll be alone – oh, she was just going to tear Brad’s business card up but she fishes it out. She's come to expect a certain number of challenges in the field. Underestimating her is one thing, but this? This spoiled the entire evening. He’s got his email on it. Good. That’s something she can work with. Not sure how, yet, but it’s _something_. 

Give her a month or two.

\--

From: Brad Hammond

Subject: Manuscript Final Draft – Please revise and comment

To: all_faculty@seas.harvard.ed  
CC: Hammond_lab-grads@seas.harvard.ed

Attached: Hammond_Draft2.doc (257 KB)

Esteemed colleagues,

The last year’s efforts have finally come to fruition, and I am thrilled to send along select chapters from my upcoming publication, _Principals of High Energy Electrons and Magnetic Radiation from Photonic Band-Gap Accelerators_. I appreciate all commentary which can be provided, so please examine the text closely. I have CC’d all graduates from my lab to assist, as I hoped to provide a robust example to them of a pre-print manuscript before a final round of editing is applied.

Please see the attachment for further details, and to mark it up freely.

Regards,

Brad Hammond

\--

From: Brad Hammond

Subject: Hideous Prank

To: Paul Lister

Paul – do you have any idea how this happened? I have changed all my passwords as you suggested, but my inbox is flooded with commentary from my grad students and faculty alike – I haven’t been able to deal with anything since I was travelling all yesterday. This was the first thing I saw and I’ve spent the last couple of hours figuring out what happened. Does that mean this has had a full day to circulate? Please call my office. I need to know what the hell to do.

Yes, it is a real manuscript that was sent out but it’s been heavily doctored and altered – entire sections re-written with fundamental errors in the formulae, or the results sections. The Dean reached out to me and there’s talk of an inquiry into the work itself to make sure that I didn’t fudge any of the data. It’s going to set me back _months_.

Call me.

Brad

\--

From: Brad Hammond

Subject: Sincere Apologies

To: all_faculty@seas.harvard.ed  
CC: Hammond_lab-grads@seas.harvard.ed

To my colleagues at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Physics,

I apologize for the email which was sent on Tuesday, without my knowledge or consent; I am aware of not only the typo in the title of the book itself, but also the gross and often offensive comments which ran throughout the margins of the copy. I assure you that none of these are original in nature; I have nothing but respect for all of my colleagues.

I can also assure you that any allegations about falsified data are entirely unfounded. My lab prides itself on robust and well-documented research practices, and we plan to comply fully with the Dean’s review. It will take some time to ascertain the extent and permanence of damage done to any datasets, publication drafts, or file structures, but myself or another University representative will be sure to update everyone once the review is concluded. 

Paul from IT Services believes I may have fallen prey to a spear-phishing attack at some point in the past month. We are working on a method to trace, but the hackers were sophisticated in their approach and until we can verify that my system is no longer compromised, I will be limited in my usual work capacities. Please excuse any setbacks or interruptions, and know that I remain committed to fulfilling my duties as best as I can. This will not affect classes in any way, although publications and projects may experience delays.

I regret this occurrence.

Regards,

Brad Hammond

\--

**2005**

May,  
  
<strike>I’ve been offered a continuing position as an adjunct out here at Caltech, which means I won’t be back in New York. I don’t know when I will see you next, which breaks my </strike>  
  
<strike>Good news! They want me as an adjunct. Of course, this means I’ll be living in Pasadena for</strike>  
  
<strike>Apparently I’m finally good enough to be worth hiring on as faculty… I accepted the job and I keep thinking that finally this will help me get over</strike>  
  
<strike>They’re hiring me on a continuing contract, but all I want is </strike>  
  
<strike>I have to get over this at some point, right? </strike>  
  
---  
  
\--

She crumples up every draft and burns them in the flame of her gas stove, which sets off the smoke detector and results in her opening every window in the house.

Goes out with Karene, Matthew, Ahmed for drinks instead; there’s a lot to celebrate, with Matthew getting hired on to work at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory and Karene nailing her interview with the DOE, on top of Liv’s new position.

Karene is talking of getting up to the PNW for a vacation, and would Olivia like to come with her? Go hiking in the mountains, sleep in a tent. Get covered in dirt until they can get to a hostel for a shower. Olivia says sure; the flights are cheaper, she can afford the time more, she can’t remember when the last time she took a vacation was and is having trouble remembering what year it even is. Liv’s family is still managing to drive her crazy, even thousands of miles away, so she doesn’t want to go near them.

Liv will learn how to cope with this or be damned.

\--

**2007, Desk notes**

Respond to MIT prank proposal  
Replies to Master’s students interest in joining lab – x3  
Textbook chapter edits

Cheese fondue: dry white, Swiss Gruyere & something melty, Bunsen burners (borrow), lab glass, skewers

Return library books

Pay library fine

Supplies invoice – sticky notes, pens, USB drives, new hard-drives

Hair wraps – get emb. thread and extensions

Make G.F. flour mix to exchange for bike repair lesson

Tea blend - chaga, assam or other black tea, raw honey, herbs to taste

Post to Y2K List-Serv – flamer mode

Grind dried beetroot to experiment with lip pigment

Wash scobies in kombucha jars 2 and 5

Correct typos on Kathryn’s submission – check citations in discussion / conclusion

Ask about tour of Alchemax facility (Hudson Valley, confirm address) when I go out to New York next month

Panel @ Physics summit in San Francisco– March 22

Guest Lectures:  
Marko – Oct 23  
Liung – Nov 14  
Watanabe – Feb 21

  * Honey masks twice weekly
  * Hot yoga this Thursday
  * Mail pre-print textbook manuscript to May for Peter
  * Organize desktop
  * Organize physical desk

\--

Days blur into weeks, blur into months, blur into years. 

Olivia writes, and she edits; she analyzes; she hires students, graduate students, post-docs for term positions. 

She watches as the computers get more sophisticated, as libraries ditch their card catalogues for digital ones, as policies shift and change. Occasionally when the mood strikes her and her ire is roused, she hacks someone who deserves it and teaches them a lesson - something subtle, but embarrassing. Networks, learns, grows, shifts, adjusts, changes, adapts. 

She harvests gardens when the season calls for it, visits Karene at the house she bought with her boyfriend-now-husband, helps them install solar-panels at the roof; has a house-warming party when she makes enough on her salary to afford her own apartment. 

There are sessions and presentations, town hall meetings and letter-writing campaigns, activist gatherings and a never-ending litany of worldly issues to combat. Liv watches acquaintances burn out and vows that won't be her, not now, not ever; she kindles the anger at her center but never lets the gap between her rage and her fear close entirely. Thinks about fusion, fission, meltdown - she exercises and eats well and watches as she lengthens, develops lean muscle, stays in control. Sure, she works too many 12-hour days and sleeps til noon on too many weekends. Misses her yia-yia's 80th birthday party, but the time off just wasn't available; makes it back for Thanksgiving, though.

Liv gains a reputation in the local lesbian scene as someone who's a good fuck, skilled and enthusiastic and swaggering when she needs to be; but all the local girls know that she's a fling. Fun, but non-committal. She has a career to tend to, and sends them on their way with a kiss that leaves them dazed before returning to her desk with an endorphin buzz in her head and loose-limbed calm.

When she's feeling particularly stable, Liv goes to the bookstore and asks for recommendations, flirting over the counter with the staff member with a nose-ring and buzzcut and buying books that she wraps in plain brown paper and sends off to May. Every couple of months she writes a letter - May, Mom, a few of her other friends back in New York. If she gets one from someone else, she responds; but other than that, she sticks to the local issues and national concerns. 

One morning, just after her birthday, she walks past her bathroom and looks in the mirror. Sees someone wearing long, draping layers and warm colours, socks with her sandals, eccentric glasses, streaks through the hair that rests piled on top of her head and tied back with a scarf. She's got two degrees on her wall and a section of her office reserved for the conference awards, the plaques of recognition, the newspaper clippings. The person smiles. 

She's made it. 

* * *

**November 2, 2000 **

Peter dressed up for Halloween as a superhero – not one of the branded ones, all of those got pulled from the shelves. No one can decide whether it’s right for heroes to profit off of their likeness, what with the controversies and all. But he was so excited, cape streaming out behind him, that sort of thing.

They’ve put him in some accelerated learning courses – he’s shy, and I worry sometimes that pulling him out of there will make things awkward for him and his classmates. But he excels there, at least as far as the Math and Science classes are going, so… I hope it’ll be worth it. It’s hard to believe he’s 8 already. He’s growing up so fast.

**February 18, 2001 **

Olivia sent another postcard! I’ve been tracking with the LHC development in CERN’s newsletters. I wonder if they have questions about who’s on their subscriber list. I clipped out the article that she was featured in - her face is changing, becoming more angular. I’d recognize her anywhere, though…

Ben is busy at work. A fair number of operations locally. Not so busy that we couldn’t go over together for the final potluck we’ll be able to take with the Xiao family. An opportunity opened up in Chicago for Lin, and it means the whole family is moving out that direction – we’re doing dinner now, but Ben and I are going over to help them pack some of their things before the movers arrive, and so that Peter and Michael can have a final playdate.

Peter is young enough that he knows this means something serious, but not old enough yet to understand what kind of distance we’re talking about – he won’t be able to just walk down the street anymore to meet Michael at the neighbourhood park, but showing him on a map didn’t quite convey the trip adequately. 

We took him to the observatory so he could look at the moon through a telescope; alumni membership coming in handy again, what with the mailing list for when stargazing nights are happening. Ben and I used that to try and explain things; the idea that there are places we can’t easily get to, but that we can if we have long enough to prepare, enough resources to make it happen.

Of course, then he wanted to watch _Phantom Menace _again, so we had to make that happen.

**April 19, 2006 **

I’m thinking today about all the friends who I hardly ever see anymore. Parenting has taken up so much space in my life that I don’t know who I would be without that…

I wasn’t in my 20’s when I realized the concept of permanence. It must have been my 30’s. Consequence. I went back to school, and oh, I was surrounded by these fresh young students – I could see the amazement when they realized I was married. And they looked young to me. I was a curiosity to them, I think, because I was committed. Some asked me for advice, on whether to propose to their partner, or how to know they were ready, or when I knew Ben was the one. Why I didn’t have kids. I got that one a lot. I have a family of two, I think I said.

When you’re that young you’re soaking in it, ideas and belief and self, who am I, no worry, I’ll figure it out later, or oh good, I know now and nothing will ever change that. The belief in malleability is so strong. I think it’s true that you can always change, but the activation cost gets steeper.

I find myself wondering what happened that my friends are so spread out these days. Sabrina, we just stopped talking after she started with the feds – I think she’s not allowed to talk about her work. Or Jean, who I think went off to teach at some school for gifted teens? Valerie is still doing elementary school but we only get to reconnect every year or so… and Liv, of course, I’m not sure where she’s based right now but I know that she’s so busy with everything. When did that happen? Is it possible that some of them I won’t see again?

And I'm starting to feel dissatisfied just... living at home. Ben talks about renovating that backyard bunker for me, so that I can start doing small-scale lab-work without access to formal facilities again, but we started costing things out and got spooked. Too much. Without some sort of grant, that’s never happening, and I’m not even sure where to apply – I’ve been out of work for so long, and other women around me talk about entry-level positions, or needing to refresh qualifications… I’m not sure.

Well. I’m Peter’s aunt, and he adores me. And I have a good husband, who loves me. Friends, and a social life I enjoy, and meaningful hobbies. Most days, that's enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of this would have been possible without [La_Temperanza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/La_Temperanza/pseuds/La_Temperanza) (aka teekettle on Tumblr), who put together some [AMAZING CSS tutorials](https://archiveofourown.org/series/458134) which allowed me to go absolutely apeshit with multimedia formatting for this chapter. My coding skills are rusty and rough at best, but I hope this is an interesting presentation. The specific tutorials used were related to notebooks, letters, sticky notes, and emails. 
> 
> The content of this chapter might be a little drier in nature, but I tried to find some ways to cover about 10 years worth of time in a way that was a little more interesting. Next chapter gets significantly heavier before we lighten up again.
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH to Erin for the Petty Revenge Scheme (I love it) and for the joke about Crete.


	7. Transcript - Interview 4.0

**[Transcript begins]**

**03/25/2019 13:15 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**The following is excerpted for viewing by individuals with clearance up to and including security levels 5. **

**If level 6 through 7, consult the following folder for an edition without redactions: 0012459-OO-2019. **

**Timestamp: 13:15 pm **

**Interviewer: **When did May Parker become aware of your identity as Doc Ock?

**Octavius: **How exactly should I know? No offence. I mean, she knew about the suit from the beginning – we started dating around the time the thing was in prototype testing. She was there at the launch, which I’m sure you knew, and later on once I... took possession of it again. She did confront me about it, at one point – I think after the first headlines dropped. 

**Interviewer: **Was anyone else aware of that moniker and identity?

**Octavius: **Sure.

**Interviewer: **Like who?

**Octavius:** You know all the important ones already. Aaron. Tombstone, obviously, though I’m not sure he ever realized what my real name was. Scorpion. Kingpin, which we’ve discussed at length. Peter, more fool me for not realizing. I think maybe my apartment super?

**Timestamp: 13:39 pm **

**Octavius: **Look, half the reason people got pissed at me was because supposedly I was flouting due process. Even the ones who agreed with the spirit of what I was doing were mad that I refused to affiliate with a particular group, or align with a particular cause. And of all people, you’re the last ones I want judging me – do you think Kingpin gave a shit about laws and procedures? Half the reason no one ever nailed anything to Fisk was because he knew how to play.

**Interviewer:** Can you give me some examples of what you mean by that?

**Octavius: **How much money do you have tied up in lawsuits with that guy? You can get as livid as you want in the op-eds, condemn him and his corporations all you want, but he can shrug that all off and counter-sue and he knows that according to the law, you can’t do a damn thing about it until you file the proper paperwork.

Fisk knows that having power means no one can afford to bring you to justice. It can take months or years to prove that wrongdoing occurred, and in the meantime they’ve furthered their agenda all the same. Fines? Settlements? Fisk thought of that as the money he had to pay in order to be allowed to do something. What makes you think he’s the only one holding that opinion?

**Timestamp: 14:05 pm **

**Octavius: **All I’m saying, is clearly I wasn’t the only ego in town tired of waiting around for other the system to step in. Cops didn’t get along with Spider-man either, as I recall. And yet you never gave him any flak for loving what he did.

**Interviewer: **Spider-Man didn’t cause millions in property damage.

**Octavius: **Oh, yes he did, depending how you address the causality of all those battles. How much did it cost to rebuild this compound, hm? Move everything upstate? It’s such a double-standard to suggest I shouldn’t have been enjoying myself. Note the prefix we attach to ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ remains the same. I was glorious, with the suit.

**Interviewer: **And without it?

**Octavius: **It completed me. Manifested my intentions. Made me more than what I was. Doc Ock was more than Olivia Octavius. She didn’t have to care as much, even though in the grand scheme of things she made very few public appearances.

**Interviewer: **It sounds as though you miss it.

**Octavius: **Obviously. The sensible thing would be to make a condition of my onboarding a lack of access to that kind of equipment again. Someday I could make my peace with that – May’s made her thoughts on the matter clear. But the schematics are still... [she seems to catch herself about to say something] hey, how’s that paperwork coming along?

**Interviewer: **[no response]

**Octavius: **Ooh. Not good then. I’d better clam up until it goes through. Stop making that face, the pun wasn’t intended. With a grimace like that you’ll pull a mussel. [Pauses] Ugh. You didn’t even catch that one. I’ll let you off the hook. Annoying, isn’t it, to go through a background check? Waiting til they get back to you? I should know. Right?


	8. Superposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every quantum state can be represented as a sum of two or more distinct states.  
Olivia gets an unexpected phone call. Experiences from her and May's graduate classes and present circumstances begin to overlap. Stunned grief is observed in real-time after a tragic loss.

**2008.**

As soon as the mike is unclipped Olivia takes off, pulling the low heels she wears off and exchanging them for a pair of Soft Mocs in her bag. For some reason, they _love _to host interviews in this hallway – maybe it’s the lighting. A chattering crew behind her, already slinging cables around their arms, reviewing lighting on the footage, the lead for the team checking her notes for the next big-name scientist to track down for a soundbyte.

What a waste of time. Everybody wants to know about the innovative research, cutting-edge technology, exciting new advances… but the gloss goes out of things as soon as your findings would necessitate a structural change. Same as usual. All the big wigs are excited about the possibility that the multiverse might be real – there could be a breakthrough any day, the numbers are starting to look good and some of the brighter kids here are proposing some really interesting experiments to conduct if enough money and equipment access can be funnelled their way – but of course, Liv gives the usual caveats and they tend to lose interest.

She’s calculated the energy balance needed to sustain any of those experiments long enough to get usable data. It’s a steep cost. No point discovering other worlds if you destroy this one in the process, or if you can’t create a sustainable flow of resources to facilitate that kind of work. Same problem that NASA has, on occasion. In the meantime, between the collapse of the USSR and the occasional supervillain’s attempt at destroying various countries around the world, the world’s got rather a lot on its plate; less interest from federal governments in alternate dimensions than you might expect, which Liv understands. And then there’s the decentralized efforts of various labs and organizations around the world – the spirit of collaboration isn’t exactly alive, considering everyone wants to get there first, but since that’s the case a lot of legwork has to go in to make yourself the most attractive competitor. As soon as you start breaking down in actual terms the material costs, the timelines, the inherent limits to the study, the ethics review that Caltech demands… well, a lot of would-be investors walk, don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you. 

Liv isn’t sure what she expected, but events like this are a disappointment nonetheless. The university affords her a lot of freedom, a lot of protection, but if she thought she’d get any kind of power to change things here it’s starting to look like she was wrong. Maybe her best work will be done somewhere else.

“God, that took forever,” she mutters once she’s far enough down the hall before casting her voice louder. “How soon can I get back to the lab?”

Nian Zhen starts tapping away at the GPS. Liv is unbuttoning her shirt to show the fitted tee underneath, untucking the front hem from her pants when the answer comes. “Traffic’s showing 30 minutes, driving.”

“Ugh. This is why I _bike_ everywhere.”

“Understandable, though not practical given the side of town we’re on and rush-hour,” Nian Zhen responds, already having swapped the GPS for her Blackberry. “There’s a lack of dedicated cyclist lanes, and a majority of the route would be going uphill.”

“All the better to work out your quads and hams, my dear.” Her own cell starts buzzing – one of those new aPhones. The number on the screen makes her pause. “Go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”

Liv ducks into one of those window alcoves they set up in places like this, the kind with the inset cushions and the concealed air-vents. Steadying breath in before she accepts.

“May? It’s gotta be past nine there, what’s going –”

But she doesn’t finish her sentence. She hears a muffled sob on the other end of the line. The light seems to recede a little, go pale and watery as Liv lowers herself to sit on the glorified padded bench.

“May?” She repeats, hollow. “What’s happened?”

“Ben’s dead.”

\--

**1991**

Olivia probably wouldn’t have given May another glance or a second of her time if it hadn’t been for some public talk they both attended. But the topic was nuclear – literally, not figuratively – and the presenter had some tough opinions about the Cold War, what impact it was likely going to have on renewable energy research, the ethical constraints which would undoubtedly be applied to all scientific fields having to do with isotopes and neutrons… such as, for instance, applied physics. Assuming the world doesn’t get blasted to slag and glass, that is. May’d had some interesting points about potential advances in material science, things like lightweight and wearable shielding that might have assisted during the Demon Core incident if it had been around, and Liv was… intrigued.

After the lecture she’d sidled up to May, acknowledged that she’d seen her and heard her across the room in a couple of lectures though never attached a name to the face or voice. Some idle banter later, and the next thing Olivia knew she was asking if May wanted to grab a coffee to discuss her research.

“Textile science?” she asks before sipping a mocha. “That’s not exactly something I thought I’d hear about in this program.”

“The department heads were skeptical too,” May replies. “But I convinced them. It wasn’t hard – I’m interested in building off of some of the work done in existing fields. NASA, for instance. Or I mean, I was. Am. I first wrote my thesis proposal… 6 years ago now? I had to take a gap.”

“Long gap for a Masters student.”

“I had to reapply, but that gave me some time to rework things. Improve the citations, tweak my methodologies. Especially given the advancements made recently, what with the… well, you know. The whole space-race angle. Plus there was the boom of heroes… let’s just say, there’s grant money.”

Fascinating. Liv says as much. May’s face lights up when Liv mentions the track her own work is going to take – something at the intersection of really expensive instruments, particles interactions, and the burgeoning attempt to validate the Multiverse Theory properly, with science, instead of through ad-hoc anecdotal claims from civilians who say they received psychic visions.

Well, okay. May’s face also lights up because the sun angles through the campus café window at just the right angle to gild her face and make a near-halo of her hair. So there’s rather a more literal, optical element at work here.

Needless to say, Liv is a little smitten instantaneously.

“What took you so long coming back to school?”

A beat. “I had to, uh. Take care of some family things. My dad wasn’t well, and my mom and I… well, we ended up caregiving. Until he passed.”

“Oh.” Liv pulls a face she hopes will read as more ‘_I’m sorry to hear that happened,_’ and less, ‘_how was I supposed to know it’d be heavy shit’_. “That’s very… good of you.” 

May shrugs, and looks down into her coffee cup. Liv watches her turn the mug in her hands, the caramel-coloured drink inside swirling partway up the sides with the motion. Liv tries to imagine doing something like that for anyone else – _her_ dad, for instance – and comes up short. She almost misses what comes next.

“There’s a kind of duty in love,” May’s saying. “And it doesn’t matter that you can’t show it to everyone all the time. When it’s necessary to do it, you have to.”

“First time I’ve ever heard things put that way. Is your mom doing okay?”

“Her? She’s doing well for herself. We make bagels on the weekends sometimes. She worked in a shipyard, briefly, before becoming a Home Ec. teacher. My dad adored her, even if I witnessed terrible crimes against food being committed through Jello in my childhood.”

She winks, and the weird tension in the room is effortlessly defused. Liv feels herself leaning back in her chair, relaxing a little from her awkwardness. Things were getting a little too heavy. 

“A shipyard, huh? She must have been _jacked_.”

May laughs again, bright as the sunbeam dancing on the tile floor, and Liv feels that thrum again: that possibility. Maybe there’s a class group project coming up she can use in order to get closer to May. Get to know her.

“Must have? Do you know how much bread-kneading that woman does? No, of course you wouldn’t – at any rate, she _continues_ to be jacked. I’ll bring in a photo,” May promises.

A couple of days later she does; Liv stares, probably a beat too long. The eyes. It’s the eyes, the blue of them, the spark, how direct they are in the gaze… and it’s the shoulders, too, the strength and slant of them, how May’s mother has her arms crossed and a power to her that shows. They look so similar. And in that instant, Liv knows like a timelapse what May is going to look like in her older years. _I will know her still, when she looks like this. _The thought comes out of nowhere but Liv seizes onto it immediately, bewildered at how certain it is. It’s embarrassing, incoherent, intuitive. And she wants it so bad, which is strange considering this is a person she barely knows.

She hands the photo back. 

“Sure you’re not a cloning experiment?” Liv says, or something with equal jest; but all through the class she finds herself distracted by studying May’s profile, wondering when the lines around her eyes from when she smiled were going to set in place, when the streak of silver in her hair was going to become the dominant colour.

From that point, Liv pays attention to how May _exists_: the way she sits, attentive and leaned-into a lesson or a discussion; how she carries herself through a hallway; the way she laughs.

“Something’s off about you,” says one of Liv’s friends in the program a couple of days later. “Got something you wanna share with the class?”

“I might be interested in someone,” she says. “Someone older. Someone in our field, even.”

“Think you have a shot?”

“Of course. I do until I don’t, right? And even then, nothing’s for certain. My chances could improve later on.”

“Wait, you said it was someone in our field, right? We’re a small class. Who is it?”

“May – that short-haired lady looks like she can’t be pushed over… what?”

She had intended to launch into an impassioned listing of all the immediate traits and quirks that had so endeared May to her, but instead trails off. It’s the look on her friend’s face.

“You mean May Parker?”

“Yeah, that’s her… what about it?”

“You know she’s married, right?”

\--

**2008**

“Wait, what?”

A rustling noise from the other end of the line, but that’s it.

“Shit… May, I’m so sorry – what happened?”

Muffled noise, then:

“I can’t say.” Shaky, soft. “There’s going to be an investigation. I just… oh, God –”

Faintly, someone asking if May needs to sit down. Peter? No, the tone is too deep. 

“What can I… hold on,” Liv covers the receiver. “Nian Zhen! I need you –” Now back on the line, “this is cruel to ask, when you are things happening, do you know?”

Liv leans a hand on the cold window, floor yawning. She can’t think. Meetings, they’ll need to be cancelled. Maybe Karene can look after Liv’s houseplants for a week, or however long it needs to be.

“I don’t know… I don’t know why I called, I’m sorry. It’s just. The only friends here are once who’ve been around since Peter, I wanted someone else to know… I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m sorry. I should go.”

“No, May?” There’s a talk in a week that can get moved. Discretionary days. If she emails her publisher now she’ll get an extension. Nian Zhen is here, ready, quizzical. “May, listen, don’t go for a second, okay? I don’t know when, but I’m going to come out there. You don’t have to worry about me but I’m on my way. Can I call back?”

Nothing, for just long enough that Liv pulls the phone away from her slightly to make sure May didn’t actually hang up. Thickly, “I won’t be able to answer.”

“That’s fine, you don’t have to, can I text?”

A muffled noise, of assent or indifference or choked-off emotion. Olivia takes it as a yes. “Sorry isn’t enough, May, I’ll tell you when I know more. Are you going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. There are people here. I have to go.”

Silence.

“Dr. Octavius?”

“I need a second.” Hand still on the cold glass. “Can you bring up my week’s schedule, please?”

Please means it’s serious. She hears Nian Zhen open her bag, start rummaging through for the planner. Flights, she needs to think about flights. What’s the smallest carry-on she can take? What’s the security lineup going to be like? Is there an overnight, maybe one with standby seating? Fuck it if she knows. That’s what an administrative assistant is for.

“Here–”

Liv takes the book, scans through – her eyes land on an excess of lines, too many colour-coded segments; the calendar looks like a DNA-sequencing chart. “Shit.” 

\--

**1991**

Liv is listening to May talking about her in-laws over beers, and it’s nearly driving her crazy.

Despite everything, their casual outings continued, once Liv got over the sting and the five stages of grief – she’s putting a hold on ‘acceptance’, though, at least for now. Classroom conversations begat more coffee breaks, and then there was the Common Language book. May reading a bit from it, prompting Liv to go out and buy her own copy… and there’s a lot of saucy content in Twenty-One Love Poems, isn’t there? The entire collection is feminist, radical, and also intensely lesbian. Enough to spark the tentative, half-open conversation about orientations and attraction, once Liv catches May’s attention with some extended eye contact over the top of the pages. So here they are, months into a friendship, enough that May will come meet Liv at the campus bar without a second thought.

Still. There’s the fact that May’s in-laws are overseas on a mission, and that’s something Liv has an issue with. The employer, not necessarily the employees.

“Richard and Mary are perfectly lovely, and it’s a respectable job with benefits – including medical – and salary. _You,_ of all people, should understand that, right?”

Liv shrugs. One too many jokes in high-school at her expense about the military doing her some good, getting her in shape. “Not if you’re going to be beholden to all that bullshit that comes with it. Doesn’t interest me. I want my own lab.”

“You won’t stay in academia? I thought you’d be a natural teacher.”

May sounds surprised; Liv can’t decide if she thinks it’s cute that May sees her in education, or patronizing, or some combination of the two. Liv knows someone getting her M.Ed. after a few years in the classroom, and Valerie’s firecracker personality is the _only _thing standing between her and utter oblivion, judging from the stories she laughs off. Kids baffle Olivia – she wouldn’t know what the hell to do with any she was responsible for. And post-secondary students? Hell no – she knows what an asshole she can be to all her professors, they never fail to remark as such in the comments on her work, and wouldn’t want to be on the other side of that.

“Not if I can avoid it. The lack of structure is _killing _me – all this work! Towards _what_? To spend the next decade slaving after tenure? No way. I want to set my own deadlines, but not like _this_. It’s exhausting. I’m going to find some private funding and work from there.” She reaches out, grabs May by the shoulder without really thinking about it, face dipping close. “Plenty of scientists who get to do outreach as a part of their job, and there’s _such_ potential for an audience if you’re doing the cutting-edge kind of work. Right?”

May swallows hard. Is that a blush on her face? “You do love the spotlight.”

Liv leans back slightly, tilting her bottle towards May. Doesn’t let go yet, lets her touch linger. A mockery of a salute, a cheeky grin on her face. “If I’m willing to stay in it, then people are less inclined to take a look at what I do behind the scenes.”

“You keep saying those kinds of things, and I’m never going to be able to let you out of my sight.”

“Is that a promise?” Liv dares, fully withdrawing, sitting back to advertise the widened spread of her legs. May looks away with a tiny half-smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. _This _she can work with. Flirtation is comfortable.

“Careful,” May says. “I’m a married woman.”

“I know.”

“So don’t say anything to me that you wouldn’t to any other married woman.” A measured swig from her bottle.

“Doesn’t exclude much,” Liv counters. “You keep saying, _maybe in another life_ this could have been a thing. That’s a heck of an impetus for me to continue my research. _Find_ that other life, you know?”

“I know. But you know where things stand in this one.” May’s eyes searching Liv’s face. She likes the way that feels. Appreciates the way one of May’s hands is absently playing along the edge of the table.

“I do.” Liv is loose and comfortable, so maybe that’s why she relaxes for once. “It’s a change of pace. You don’t let me get away with it. The anomalous result.”

“Mm. Don’t get me wrong – it’s flattering. It’s… nice. It’s just not going to lead to anything.”

“Bummer for me.”

“Should we change the subject?”

“Prob’ly.”

Whatever they talk about is lost by the time Liv gets home, fumbling a key into the lock of the queer-punk co-op apartment she rents out with too many other students. She’s mulling things over. The parameters she has to work with usually make sense – flirtation, seduction, the stress of inevitable relational fracture. Predictable. May’s thrown her for a loop. The script there but the responses all different. Clear boundaries: what a concept. Maybe she gets to keep this.

By the time she flops onto her bed she’s had a glass of water or two and wondering what May tells Ben when she gets home about the evening. Possibly everything, maybe nothing. Liv runs a hand over her mouth, craving some kind of sensation there, down the side of her neck, back up. Pressing the arch of her palm, where the fingers all connect, against the open desirous smear of her mouth – she wants a kiss, she wants a lot. Olivia wonders what May kisses like, and knows she’ll probably never find out.

Does she want to sleep with May, or does she want something approximating what May has with someone? Olivia decided when she was 15 that she didn’t want to know what it was like to have someone she couldn’t live without – she had too much to do and it seemed perfectly natural to be able to live without boys involved. By 19 she’d added that the idea of soulmates was stupid – statistically speaking, in the billions of people across the world, you are going to have more than one who is compatible with you on a variety of different fronts. Now, she’s sure of one thing – she wants women – but the rest of the details are fuzzy.

Olivia grabs her own bedding, bundling it against her torso – she waits to fall asleep. Wondering what works.

\--

**2008**

A red-eye flight smells like weary businessmen and quiet desperation. Olivia wearing socks and Doc Marten sandals that she can chuck off before going through security. Too many layers of long sweaters, wearing as much of the clothing she’s packed for the week as she can to avoid carry-on overages. The TSA agents squinted as she shucked most of them unceremoniously into some of their stupid plastic bins but didn’t give her a hard time – so long as she’s treated it like an elaborate overcoat, what were they gonna do? Stop her? She’s using a silk sleep-mask like a headband to hold her hair back, which is another clever trick to avoid anyone asking her questions. She means business.

Survival food: a dry bagel slathered in cream cheese, a packet of over-salted peanuts from the store, a wizened looking apple. Orange juice that Liv takes a few swallows of, topping up the difference with a mini-bottle of vodka purchased from the airport gift-shop when she gets a second to herself in the bathroom. They’re pre-boarding when she gets to her gate, giving her a few precious seconds to tap another few lines of instruction into the email she’s composing.

Her away message is already set.

_I am in New York for a personal emergency; please do not attempt to contact me by phone unless someone is dying or a portal to another universe opens in my office. I will be monitoring this email while away. I expect to return… _

The message to Nian Zhen is a little more extensive. She keeps thinking up additional bullet points:

From: o.octavius@caltech.edu

Subject: Away tasks

To: nz.lee@caltech.edu

  * Get Grant, Eva, and Paulette on the revisions for the manuscript they’re contracted on ASAP, tell them to record any issues or questions in detail and pass those along to me by Thursday.
  * Please send cancellation emails to my prospective Masters students and tell them that I’ll reschedule the tours of my lab when possible; do not mention anything about withdrawing from consideration, if they do that’s fine but I don’t want to turn away any hopefuls over a week’s absence.
  * Tell someone from maintenance that they _really _need to check on the coolant levels every 12 hours or so, and to please monitor all alarm systems early and regularly. My students know what they’re doing, but just in case.

I will reimburse you for any personal overtime incurred, and thank you for your help.

She’s never once hit a character limit for an email, but this one might push it. They’re announcing her zone for boarding; Liv plunges a hand into her bag, feeling around for the slip of her boarding pass. Still there. Fucks sake, the line is at least 30 people long. It’s going to take forever to get to the front of it.

She pauses for a second, summoning up her away message on the screen of her laptop.

Olivia removes the line about someone dying.

Leaves in the part about portals so that they know it’s her, and that she’s serious.

\--

**1992**

The end of term mixer is more relaxed than Liv would have thought, but still fairly outrageous.

David offered his house, meaning it’s now full with a couple dozen grad students in various states of inebriation, caused by sleep deprivation or alcohol or both. Everyone’s craving stimulus and release – someone’s brought out an NES and Super Mario Kart, and an impromptu tournament has begun. Out back, someone’s getting a fire-pit going, allegedly to symbolically burn class syllabi in. Music thrums in the den downstairs, and various people are draped over the back of the couch or the armchairs or each other.

Liv got out relatively unscathed by this semester apart from the last few days of minimal sleep, so she’s here to have a good time; there’s a moratorium on thesis talk or work talk or science talk of any kind, although someone is demonstrating how miracle berry tablets work with shots of pickle juice and lime wedges in the kitchen. Maybe fun science only, then. All told? It’s simple entertainment, there’s pizza, and so far Liv is the undisputed queen of Rainbow Road.

Maybe that’s why she notices late that May is here – too much ambient sound and motion. But sure enough, she’s arrived, shrugging off her coat and saying hi to Jules by the door. There’s a cooler of beer and such near the kitchen island that May lifts a bottle out of, borrowing someone’s opener. She tilts it to her mouth before noticing Liv. Smiles. A mini-salute.

“Need room?” Liv calls over. 

“Please! Thank God, it’s over. Ben made lasagna and salad before I got here, but are there snacks if I need some later?”

There are – a smorgasbord of them in the kitchen, though Liv warns May quietly about the brownies and spiked punch. Easy enough to shift, make space. Liv offers the controller as May settles beside her, the couch cushions angling her in towards Liv’s body. Settling in comfortably beside each other is something they’re used to, by now; May can be very affectionate, not just with Liv, but it’s nice all the same to receive a hug from her. Or a gentle leaning-on.

“Do you play?” Liv queries, pointing to the TV – on-screen, a pixelated red shell ricochets into Toad’s car, knocking them into the air.

“I… hm. What is this thing?”

“You haven’t played Nintendo?”

“I think that’s more a your-generation thing.”

“Aren’t we part of the same one?” Liv grins, and is elbowed gently in the ribs for her troubles.

“Maybe so. I’ll watch for a bit, though!” This decision is followed by a loud yawn; May must be tired.

“Sure,” Liv says, and then leans in against May. “Glad you came.”

May smiles, takes another drink. “Glad to see you too.”

She’s warm, pressed up to Liv’s side.

\--

By the time midnight rolls around, Liv’s arm is draped along the back of the couch close to May’s shoulders, and May in turn is tilted close to the screen, thumbs pressing rapidly and seemingly at random across the controller.

“C’mon–!”

“Damnit, Parker, quit being so fucking ruthless!”

“Keep up with me, then! HA!” Groans from the rest of the couch as she crosses the finish line first, her kart rendering to fill the entire screen as her character begins to cheer. May polishes off her current beer, slams the bottle down next to the first on the coffee table. “That’s how ya do it!”

May stretches her arms above her head, the movement pulling her shirt up slightly, before falling back and re-establishing a cozy, close contact. Liv didn’t think of her shoulders as a restful space, for as bony as she suspects they are, but May’s head tucks up there nicely enough. A beat before Liv decides to wrap an arm around May properly, and she feels made of sun-warmed glass all over. May sighs contentedly, bantering good-naturedly with the victims of defeat surrounding her. The complainants opt for putting the console away in favour of a movie on VHS. Someone brings in a bowl of popcorn and some veggie sticks with dip, so neither of them have to get up.

Time passes.

The music’s still going but people begin to filter out. Some head to the back porch to smoke weed, and more from the den swell upstairs to crowd along the floor in a raucous tumble. May draws her knees up to her chest as Liv thwaps a pillow into someone’s head for almost tripping into them, and among his good-natured objections and a ragged chorus of people singing along to the end of Rocky Horror, May leans in.

“I’m going to get some air,” she says against Liv’s ear; Liv has to suppress a shiver before agreeing to come outside.

December has been tentative with its cold this year, but May shrugs on an oversize military surplus coat – probably one that came from Ben, if he snagged it from work. Even then, May draws down into herself, shudders at the drop in temperatures. So when Liv joins on the front step she takes May’s hands and rubs them to keep the blood going. Unfurls the blanket she grabbed from a basket inside and wraps it around the both of them, too.

“Thanks, Liv. Whew-!”

“No problem. Feeling okay?”

“Doing fine – it’s just been a long week. There was a lot starting to go on in there. I’m getting a little old for this. The noise and people, I mean. I only put my last paper into the drop-box tonight, before heading home; Ben got on my case about coming out here all the same.” Her voice deepens. “‘You can sleep in all you want this weekend, but go see your friends, you need it’. So here I am.”

Quiet streets. Somewhere a few houses over, a dog is barking. Laughter is barely audible from the backyard, and Liv can smell the smoke from what must still be a decent-sized fire. The step is slightly in shadow from a room overhang, a tree; the chain link fence along the yard gleams dully in the streetlamp light. The faint drifts of snow that haven’t melted in the warmth of the last few days almost glow. Liv likes how it feels, heart huge and calm. “He’s right, you did need this. You loosened the hell up over the last couple hours.” 

At the comment, May lolls her head back; peers at Liv side-eyed before laughing. Liv tries not to stare too overtly at May’s throat, the space where her loose t-shirt has slipped beneath the jacket, almost onto May’s shoulder. “He was. And is that supposed to be an insult?”

“Hardly!” Liv pauses. “Hey, you gonna be okay to get home?”

“M’fine. All I need to do is call, and he’ll drive over to get me.” May leans her head on Liv’s shoulder again, hums contentedly, wraps her arms around Liv to hug in more closely. Cold air catches in her lungs for a moment, and she breathes out very, very slowly so May won’t notice. “Mm. Should probably do that sooner rather than later. This is way too comfortable.”

May turns her head slightly where it’s resting so she can look up at Olivia again; Liv sees the slight shine of half-closed eyes beneath May’s brow, her bangs untidy. Liv flicks them out of the way with a pinky and she feels, rather than hears, May chuckle.

Holds perfectly still. Usually this means something. That reply’s too flirty, this other too flip. The long ellipses between May’s words and Liv coming up with something she’s comfortable saying give May enough time to notice a lag – she shifts.

“You okay?”

Liv reaches over almost absently, in along the collarbone. Her fingertips and thumb close, light at May’s shirt collar. She hears May suck in a startled breath. Tugs the fabric back to rest against May’s neck, then her coat, covering her more fully.

“Didn’t want you feeling exposed,” she hears herself murmur.

Hasn’t moved her hand, yet; under her fingers she feels the whisper-beat of May’s heart, barely perceptible. This is a bad idea. That said, she’s had this kind of bad idea before. May sits back up, slowly, her spine curling up vertebrae by vertebrae. Liv watches her smooth her hair back behind one ear, lick her lips nervously, but May hasn’t shifted that much further away. The blanket still curls around both of them, although it’s in danger of slipping off.

“Liv, I…”

Liv leans in, stops when May doesn’t reposition further or continue her thought. Resumes inching forward, slant of her spine increasing, inches closing, taking hold of May’s jacket collar gently…

May jerks away. The blanket slips off to puddle behind and beside them, trailing onto the steps. There’s a loud whoop from somewhere behind the house.

“…Shit.”

“I… Liv, I can’t, you know I…”

“Don’t.”

Liv bites the inside of her lip furiously, glares over the grass. The dog starts up barking again as a car rolls down the street, the headlights sweeping over the front yard and lighting the two of them up for an instant. May’s palm, warm on her cheek, insistently but gently turning Liv’s face towards her own before falling away. Liv wants to cry, or scream – instead, she balls her fists up, nails biting, knuckles whitening from the cold and the effort, and tries to grin.

“Sorry. Misread what was going on there.” She’s an idiot. How on earth? “Should we go back in, or..?”

“No, we need to talk about… Liv, if things like that are too hard for you, I won’t do it anymore–”

“No!” Too loud. A strenuous pause, enough to make sure they’ve not been overheard, before Liv continues: “No. I’m embarrassed. Consider this a lesson to me. I knew better. But please, don’t… don’t stop treating me the way you do other people. Do what you need to so you feel comfortable, but… it’s nice. Until I… this was nice.”

May’s shoulders slump. “It… was. And nothing happened. So we’re okay. Just, please, Olivia, don’t do something like that again. I trust you. I want to keep on doing so.”

“Stop it.” Liv mutters.

Now a flash of hurt, maybe fear crosses May’s features. “Stop what?”

If Liv didn’t know herself better, she’d swear she was feeling shame. “Making me feel like I’m not a very good person.”

“Oh, Liv.”

A heavy sigh, before May reaches out and draws her in – this time Liv’s head rests against May’s shoulder, arms strong around her but resolute.

“Sometimes I wish I could,” Liv hears above her, so soft. “I do, I just. I won't. Even if I want to.”

\--

“You’d better go place your call,” Liv finally says, once the nights chill has a chance to curl around her hands and arms.

\--

Liv promises herself that she won’t do that, or anything like it, ever again.

She doesn’t.

\--

**2008**

Regrettably, Liv hardly slept on the plane – too distracted by the work she tried to get done on her personal computer, so that she’d have a few final files and emails to fire off once she’s able to connect to an Ethernet cable on arrival. Instead, she listened to the hum and rattle of the plane around her, the coughs and grumbles from other passengers… shifted her legs so they wouldn’t cramp… watched as the light outside the airplane window got brighter, shifted from deep navy pricked by stars to a grey through turquoise and settling on the rose-gold of sunrise. She’s pretty sure she crashes harder in the taxi, maybe even hits REM, snoring with her cheek pressed against her jacket where she’s bundled it just below where the car window is.

But Liv is able to forget how tired she is when she arrives. She leaves a generous tip for the guy, tries to push through her exhaustion as though it’s a membrane encompassing her perception of the day. By now she’s pushing mid-morning, which means according to her brain she’d usually be waking up at this time… so when no one initially answers the door, Liv starts to worry whether she’s got the wrong address, if somehow she’s been mailing packages that get re-routed by some stranger, or if in her delirium she inverted a number or two on the scribbled slip of paper that she handed to the cabbie who brought her here…

But then there’s a shadow behind the decorative glass panels, and May opens the door.

Her body is hunched in on itself, Liv notices. A kind of hollow desolation is in May’s eyes, and that’s terrifying. May looks her over dully and breathes out; a twitch at the edge of her mouth, which looks as though it may be set in a miserable carved line.

“Look at you. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I hope that’s not the case,” Liv tries – but to her own ears it comes out leaden with false humour. May’s chin wobbles, her eyes filling up with tears that she angrily scrubs away. “Hey, hey – I’m… I’m really sorry. But I’m here now.”

“Cried enough for a lifetime, recently – I’m not about to let myself start again now. You should come in.”

Liv steps into a house with most of the lights off. She sees Peter – when did he get so tall? – emerging from the kitchen; he barely acknowledges her presence with a nod in her direction, hovers for a second, then pushes past them and goes outside. The door slams behind him, shutting out the sunlight from outside.

May looks after him. “He’s taking it so hard. Won’t talk about it. And he’s been out late almost every night… I’m worried about him.”

Liv licks her lips nervously. Throat’s gone dry. “Did… can I ask what happened?”

A pause, before May shakes her head. She turns away, bends down as though to grab Liv’s luggage. “Not right now. We should get you settled first.”

Even now, she’s trying to be hospitable. Liv reaches out and places a hand, tentative, as though May is going to spook, gently on her upper back – where the shoulder blades meet. “May, I can get that. I’m... I’ll help with whatever you—”

But she’s cut short by May flinching, spinning, throwing her arms around Liv as though Liv is the only solid thing left in the world. By a sob, muffled against her front.

God, not like this. This isn’t what she meant, ever, at any point in her life, when she wished things could have been different.

\--

**1992 **

Can she be honest with herself?

It’s kind of a central question.

The truth is, Liv is pretty sure that no one has stuck around because something has gone horribly wrong with her personality – calcified into something acrid and caustic. It’s not a mystery, what’s gone wrong in most of her interpersonal dealings: she knows it’s something about _her_. But with so many of these things core elements of her personality – and ones that don’t always serve her poorly – it’s much harder to determine where the issues begin. In defiance of that fact, she’s been quoted on more than one occasion loudly proclaiming that anyone who’s thought that they could force her to change was sorely mistaken. Not her family, not her friends, not any of her partners. As though it was just an assertive phrase, when in her case it’s more a confession of her shortcomings.

It’s contextual, right? Some people need to hear that they shouldn’t be forced to mould their personality into something that pleases other people. But Liv suspects that her issue isn’t a lack of self-esteem, but the opposite. And yet all she can really do is double down, when someone tells her to her face that she needs to do better, be something more. She goes overboard. She’ll show them. Like everyone who’s ever taken ire with the fact that Liv won’t stop talking about environmental devastation, the human cost of progress, the need to dismantle elements of capitalism gone rogue. _What are _you_ doing about it, if you’re so damn critical, _they sneer, and she gets to come back with an itemized list to present alphabetically, chronologically, or in order of priority.

Liv is keenly aware that she’s hard to get along with. Combative, opinionated, irreverent, frequently bleak, pragmatic to a fault – none of these are exactly conducive to a happy work-life environment or a prospective life-partner when present at the levels they’re found in Olivia’s personality. They’ve made things interesting, that’s for sure, but sometimes Liv wishes she could get a hard reset. Maybe a move across country would do her some good on that front. A botanist she briefly dated told her that if she was a soil type, only hemlock, blue spruce, and white pine would be able to tolerate her because she was so freakin’ acidic. Not exactly a glowing review.

So it _figures _that the one person who not only seems to actively like Liv, but who willingly accepts her foibles and flaws, who calls her on her worse habits while also challenging her to grow out of them, is also several years older _and taken._ Against any evidence to the contrary, happily so; May doesn’t complain about Ben the way Liv has heard countless women do about their spouses.

It’s enough to make Liv understand the cruel irony. She’s gotten a taste of something so good that she’ll never want to settle for less – only something equal, which statistically is unlikely to come about. See, she’s a rational being. Empirical evidence is preferable to anecdotes, or ad-hoc conjecture. And if you count up the number of relationships which began explosively, subtract the number that were one-night stands not leading anywhere, multiply by the number of years spent half-heartedly existing in a divided state between in-a-relationship and not, and determine the outcome? You end up with a long list of partners, and a tiny proportion with whom that break-up was amicable. Which means something doesn’t compute, but Liv has no idea where to begin to start pinpointing the failure points. Call it inherent vice.

But May isn’t her partner. May is one of her best friends, at this point. One of the only ones stable and mature enough not to be dealing with the same emotional drama bullshit that Liv and all her friends and peers are. And Liv’s _so mad _at herself for being afraid that she’ll never experience anything like this again. May isn’t perfect, obviously, and Liv isn’t deluding herself on that front. But she hasn’t tried to force Liv to change, just… encouraged her to do so.

Being with May _works_. Or it would. If. 

\--

**2008 **

There’s this essential question of how much space to give May right now, and Liv isn’t sure what parameters the answer has.

Routines are something that take months or years to build. Scattered around the house are still-life collections of daily rituals, interrupted – a pot of coffee, half-full, with mineral sediment on the surface. Or a stack of books on the coffee table. A basket of laundry that needs to be folded, one of Ben’s shirts flattened over the edge of the ironing board in the basement. Dishes in the sink.

The last are what May lets her touch. A mug on the side-table in the living room, no; but the rest have to be done. At least May’s friends have come by with cooked meals in Tupperware that can be neatly stacked once cleaned out on the counter. There’s a rotating cast through the house to keep the Parkers occupied, even if it’s not time for sitting shiva, but Liv keeps getting impressions of where half an equation is missing once the house empties out again. May lingering at the table, or curling up in an armchair whose cushions are worn to fit a body that isn’t hers.

Not much is asked of Liv, so she keeps herself busy. Chores, and cleaning – she figures out where things are kept even if the arrangement perplexes her. After a lengthy shower one night, a run around the block to stretch out muscles that are cramping, Liv uses a forearm to scrub condensation from the mirror and squints at the out-of-focus face appearing there.

“What are you doing here?” She mutters to herself.

Nian Zhen calls on the third day to ask when Olivia would like to book a return flight home. Karene calls the day after that to ask her where she keeps the plant food, since an application of it was requested.

“How’s your friend taking things?”

“How do you _think_? Her husband just… well.”

Peter is on leave from school but Liv hardly sees him – catches his room empty by accident, window left slightly ajar, and realizes he must have snuck out. May is elsewhere, so Liv slides the window closed without locking it – the absence of a breeze will keep May from realizing. He’s back later that evening, looking grim and exhausted; makes eye-contact with Liv, who nods. Peter acknowledges by tilting his own head, before bounding up the stairs far too quickly. 

Then May’s cousin flies in. She casts an appraising eye over Olivia before greeting May. Since the guest room is taken, she’ll have a hotel for the evening. When’s Liv heading back to California? The family can take it from here.

On her last night, Liv is carrying her luggage to the front door so that in the morning she can quietly slip out of bed and leave, allowing The Cousin to seamlessly arrive and transition into her appointed roles without any friction. Without causing May to feel that she has to be a good host, or that she owes Liv anything. It’ll be like she was never here, except for the note that Liv plans to leave behind to tell May that if there’s anything more she can do…

“...I haven’t been able to sleep,” Liv hears from behind her. She glances left to see May there, shrouded in a blanket on the floor beside the couch.

Without saying anything, Liv leaves her bag where it is and crosses the room.

“I don’t believe in vengeance,” May continues slowly. “But I keep having these dreams. And I wake myself up from them. Ones where the person who did this to me is held to account.”

“…Did they find him?”

“They’re not giving details out yet. There’s going to be a trial. Gathering evidence. But…” May frowns. “Something odd about his apprehension…”

Liv’s seen the headlines on the 11:00 news, a couple hours before – a small-time thief trussed up with massive quantities of spider-webbing. Some kind of new hero with mutation powers, maybe. The tabloids are already speculating but Liv can’t imagine May reading those sorts of papers.

Hesitantly, she lowers to crouch next to May, who’s staring straight ahead.

“Can you stay?”

Liv’s heart drops. “No, I… I have to get back to California, it’s already been a week and–”

“I don’t mean here. Not New York. Just with me. It’s – it’s been more than twenty years since I last slept alone and suddenly I’m supposed to… never mind, that’s not fair, forget I said anything.”

Not like this. But that doesn’t stop Liv from reaching across the distance between them to take May’s hand in her own, feeling the other woman jump a little as she does so. “It’s okay.”

It’s as though she’s groping along the bottom of a body of water, pulling through silt – Liv has no precedent for this, any of it, but she lies down on the cushions and beckons May towards her. The couch is small but May settles, part beside and part on top of Olivia’s body; Liv wraps her arms around May, pulls the blanket to cover them both. Mentally, she shoves down against the pounding of her heart, every cell of hers that’s yelling _alive _as though she’s not capable of willing them still. May gradually relaxes against Liv as though she was waiting for something more to happen. Nothing does. Liv smooths through May’s hair, gentle and slow.

“It’s okay,” she repeats, as May’s breathing evens out, gradually deepens into sleep.

Liv stays awake, unmoving, for a very long time.

\--

What a way to arrive back: an email inbox in the thousands, an office door whose mailbox is overflowing even after maintenance clearly brought the worst of the stack in and deposited it on her desk, and a voicemail machine balefully glowing red at her. Full. Olivia sighs, dumps herself into the beanbag chair on the floor after locking the door, and falls asleep for 7 hours.

After waking up, she gets to work.

By the time another week has gone past and her inbox is down to only triple digits in the unread column, Liv is cursing her hubris - she can’t do this again. It took hours to get across the country, and what if it had been May who was sick, or hurt? When it’s her family what will she do? She can’t drop everything – this proves she’ll pay dearly. The next time she goes to visit May, it’ll be a planned trip.

Liv realizes she’s planned a next time. Is already thinking of how to make it manageable, from a work and personal standpoint.

She’s not going to leave May alone to deal with the anniversary of this happening, after all. 

\--

**2010 **

To Dr. Olivia Octavius,

Hello, Doctor!

I have further details for you regarding the projects and proposals you inquired about last month, but also wished to tip your ear in the direction of New York – as I recall, you’d mentioned recently an inclination towards moving back east. There may be an opportunity coming up at Alchemax’s Hudson Valley location; soon there will be a call for candidates to submit their qualifications. At a glance, I believe that your CV would fit the bill… please give me a call if you’d like further details. I will be happy to forward you the full job description, in order to give you time to compile a packet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No journals from May this time, I hope for understandable reasons. 
> 
> Thank you, as always, for reading.


	9. Transcript - Supplementary to Interview 4.0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interview with May Parker.

**[Transcript begins]**

**03/25/2019 11:00 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**The following is excerpted for viewing by individuals with clearance from level 3 up to and including security levels 5. **

**If level 6 through 7, consult the following folder for an edition without redactions: 0012459-OO-2019. **

**Interviewer:** Thank you for coming in today, ma’am.

**Parker:** Well. I figured it was polite of you to ask, though I also suppose it wasn’t really a request. Still. I’ve been here before many times.

**Interviewer:** We’d just like to go over a few questions. You can decline to answer, although that will reflect on your testimony.

**Parker: **That’s also not surprising.

**Interviewer:** Um. Would you like some water? Some of this might be uncomfortable.

**Parker:** Tea if you have it will be fine, thank you.

[Tea is brought after a moment. May Parker sits quietly with her hands folded on the table until it arrives, at which point she speaks up again.]

**Parker:** Much obliged, Todd. How’s Amir?

**Interviewer:** She’s good. I’m not supposed to talk about personal matters in the interview though. Uh. Should we get into it, then? Let’s get into it. Ms. Parker, we need to start with whether you were ever in breach of the non-disclosure clause regarding your nephew.

**Parker:** You mean, did I ever tell Olivia that Peter was Spider-Man?

**Interviewer:** If that phrasing is useful, then yes.

**Parker:** No, I did not. [She takes a drink of tea] He and I had long talks. He knew I was seeing her, long before she adopted her own alter-ego. We stuck to ‘friends’ in terms of a relationship descriptor, given he worked in her lab, but he figured things out fast. Besides, she and I never really formalized an arrangement for all those years. We figured it could go unspoken. I was aware of the liability, for all of us, from the start.

**Interviewer:** Did you ever tell Olivia about Peter after she began her excursions as Doc Ock?

**Parker:** You’ll have some of this on record, but: no. Peter stopped working for her so he could take on other contracts, around the same time he started freelancing for the Bugle. He submitted the employment dates to S.H.I.E.L.D. as required.

At any rate, a couple years after those changes is when she re-appropriated the suit. She wouldn’t talk about why or how. So no, while I confronted her about her actions I never divulged Peter’s identity. Peter and I knew who she was, of course. But it was not a conversation open to a third party. Sorry.

[She takes another swallow of tea]

Where was I?

**Interviewer:** You were explaining that she remained unaware. If I may, you mentioned she never talked about how she got the suit back?

**Parker:** No. It looked dramatically different from when I saw it at the summit in 2015. She’d upgraded it, so I have no idea how long it had been gone from her lab or when she made the modifications. Liv only told me how it worked, gave some demonstrations of its capabilities.

But uncharacteristically, she... well, she wasn’t evasive, just never brought up the circumstances. I decided I didn’t want to know. And then with what she got involved in, I think I just assumed that she’d stolen it from whomever had purchased the rights. The first fight with Peter was broadcast not long after...

**Interviewer:** How did you respond?

**Parker:** Nausea. For weeks. I could keep down toast, some soup. I remember passing out after an all-nighter trying to improve the textile base of Peter’s suit in order to cope with the new stressors I knew it was likely to encounter... for all I know, you still have those samples. Did you find them oddly specific?

**Interviewer:** It was consistent with your routine adjustments after any new villain debuted or emerged.

**Parker:** Hm. Well, that was that. Any chance I’d ever tell her myself vanished entirely, given the circumstances. Sometimes I wonder what would have changed if I had done something differently, but I had multiple incentives to keep quiet. You want to know when she realized who he was?

**Interviewer:** When was that?

**Parker:** The night he died, same as anyone else.

[She finishes her tea and stares into the empty cup for a while]

**Interviewer:** Do you need anything?

**Parker:** No, I’m fine. Liv and I hadn’t spoken for almost or at least a year at that point. I’d left her voicemails, messages – she didn’t respond to very many, and then stopped entirely. Miles tells me that’s called ‘ghosting’. Seems a shitty word to call it. 

**Interviewer:** How did Olivia Octavius characterize her role in the death of Peter?

**Parker:** I didn’t want to hear anything about it from her for a long time. But eventually, I needed to know... She said she wasn’t in the room when it happened. It was the first full test of the collider involving human targets. She was somewhere in the observation deck, or the engineering bay after the explosion... I’m sorry, I don’t want to continue. Was there anything else?

**Interviewer:** Yes, unfortunately – but take a break. We’ll come back in ten minutes or so.

**Parker:** Good. I need a cigarette.

**Interviewer:** Ms. Parker, you smoke?

**Parker:** Only in the direst of circumstances. [May Parker smiles] Don’t worry about me; I quit a long, long time ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while! Between a new job and the holiday season, I went on a bit of a hiatus with this fic. I also, admittedly, got incredibly invested in Terminator: Dark Fate and a re-watch of Person of Interest - so that's been occupying a bit of my mental bandwidth. I'm still looking forward to getting back into completing this fic. More of it is drafted than has been edited or uploaded; but thank you, as always, for reading. Let's get back to it.


	10. Objects at Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2010 - 2016.  
Olivia experiences the mildest pangs of what might commonly be considered a mid-life crisis, and uses the opportunity to move back to New York for a career change. May becomes an element in Liv's life that is more difficult to ignore, once physical proximity is re-established. She also becomes significantly more present in Olivia's life as a particular suit is developed.  
They have several good years together, although it's hard to say who's protecting whom from certain kinds of information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a small amount of text run through the Zalgo generator, which may affect screen readers.

_This is a test. _

_\--_

_The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog._

_\-- _

_Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam quis nostrud exercitation ulliam corper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. _

_\-- _

_I will return to this later and see if it works. _

_There&!s security too. Encryption isn’t my strong suit. _

_I can&!t encode a timestamp it turns out. The dates written on the inserts won&!t match the content that gets recorded h͔̤̲͖̠̻̲er̖̳̹̙͓ͅe̸͉̝. ̬M̶̬̟̣a̮͇y̵̺̩͔̞̟̞ͅb̠̲̣͍̯̕e̥̠̜̭͕̻ ͕̹̹̺̻̯̲t̛̩h̵͚̦͔̜e͕̟͙̺͓̺r̨͖̰̲e͍̤̺ ̡̭͍i̳s͚̹̜̣̥ ̟̲̬̰͙͞s̬̙̩͟o̻̩m̘̱̻̣̣ȩ͎̩ way̨̜ ͓̙̰̫̤͕̻ṱ̺̪ͅo͈̥̺̘̺̻̹ ̢͖̪͉̳̣e̦̦ͅn͙̹̠ͅs̠̗̬͔̬̻u̥͓̩r̛̝e̯̤͖ ̣̼̬̦̗i̩̜̦̪̜t̘̬̰͜ ̣̘̟̯ca͇̙͉͓̬͝ͅͅn̸̝̦ ̺̻̯̖͉w̗̝̘͔̭͈ọ̝̺ṛ̼k ̲͚̩̜̞̰b̵͓̥̺̟̱͓ȩ͍͕͚̝͍̜c̝̺̼̖̤͎͟a͚͈̤̞ṵ͕͍̫̞̠ͅs̷̭̠͍e̥̦̬ ̥̟̜o͙̟͎t̟̭h͙̞e̵̫͍̹͍̖̤̩r̜̻w̞͞i̖͚se̴͉̘̟̮̥͈̫ ̭̹͓̝͓͔i͈͖̭t̗͕̺̝ ̞͈̳̟m͔̦̞̹̩̬͞i̡̪͚͍g̵͕̠̜̪̮̼h҉̲̦̦̯̫t̰͎̰͖͇ ̝̻̣̝̖be̬ ̹ą̣ ̯͙̜̯p̴a͙͔͓̱̩̙͠i̢̲̮̼̳̼n̙͓̮͠ ͏̺̘̼̲͕̺fo͓͎̤̙̯̣̬͘r̭̫̯̞̻͚ ̴̣͎̦̼̝m̥̠̕e̼̳ ̼̦̱ḻ̛a̰̖̯̦t̘͚̜̯e̩̫͖̙͘ŗ̠ ̛̫̻͍̩͕͔̥t̜̩͓̯̘͠o͚͖̖̘͈ ͇̬̲̫s͖̱͓͕̹̥o̠͇̤̮̝͖͡r̻͈̘͜t͉̣̭ ͙̮̣̙͠o̶̻̱͈̺̮̗ų̦̖̝͖ͅṯ̡͖ ̲̬̯̙e̜̣̺̗̱͝x̢̜͉̲a͓͎͚̺͟c͙̟̦̟̣͇̲t̴̩l̛͕̘͎̥̲y̺̻͚̘͡ ̛w̖͓̭̺͕h̪̭a̗̠̰͖͙͈͙t̥̠̹͚̩̭͙͢ ͎I͉͙͈̩ ̤̲̙͇̗̺̣̕w̸͖̥͙̝͍ͅr͚o̵̳̦̹͚t̗̮͕̝̘e ̵̤̥̹w̛̮ͅh̦͇̖͈͉̝͈͟e͔͎̘͚̥n̛͖̮̠͈̝…̘̰͇̖ ̬͘_

_\-- _

_The apostrophes were not transferring correctly and troubleshooting them only made matters worse. I will have to stick to characters and periods for the time being. Otherwise I risk corrupting everything that I have accomplished so far._

_I know so many people who could help me write this but I cannot involve any of them. Bad enough that I am keeping notes anywhere other than a disposable location or S.H.I.E.L.D. servers. But I need to be able to talk to myself about what is happening. Keep my own memories. _

_Ok. _

_If this works then I have managed to create encrypted sheets of a pseudo textile that merges in with the pages of a standard diary which if I can replicate them will be invaluable in the coming years. I need to be able to write about Spider Man aka Peter and what I am doing on this current contract or else I am going to go absolutely batshit. They are insisting that I upload or store copies of every document and plan that I work on to their own servers. Understandable but I need some semblance of privacy and will create it if I cannot be given it. It never occurred to me the kind of surveillance that superheroes and their associates would be placed under but I suppose it makes sense. There are enough horror stories floating around. _

_In the meantime this does mean I have my own lab111 It does lose some of the effect to be incapable of adding some goddamn punctuation but maybe some numbers will serve as a stand in until I can get this sorted. _

_\-- _

_I’ve solved the punctuation error issues! I asked Peter for some help – did so under the guise of adding a coded patch into his suit with emergency information in the event that the suit is lost or Peter is somehow compromised. At any rate, HA! This is exhilarating. _

_\-- _

_Alright. To business, now that I have a free moment to myself. _

_This was an unexpected opportunity. After I overcame the initial shock of realizing who Peter was, we had to deal with the fallout. By the time S.H.I.E.L.D. came along, he was a good year or so into his activities as Spider-Man, and I had developed some early versions of the suit in collaboration with him. They weren’t anything special – largely spandex with reinforced seams and some early prototypes of the web dispensers. He was getting by – we were getting by – but I was starting to get worried. The situations were getting more dangerous, the stakes higher… not to mention he was trying to graduate simultaneously. I was starting to think we might have to sell the house to get some liquidity in the bank account. That was a more painful prospect than I care to relive, and my usual journal entries fell to the wayside. _

_S.H.I.E.L.D. has hired both of us on. For posterity’s sake, it is April of 2010, and we’re relatively new employees. Or recruits, depending on how you look at it. But they appreciated my CV – wanted to know what I could accomplish if given a space of my own, rather than exclude me from the process entirely. I was left to my own devices in their laboratories, with full access to their raw materials (within reason, given the scope of what I had requested)… my god, armor! I can give Peter a lightweight, flexible armor built-in to the suit with carbon nanotubes. That’s just the beginning of what I have planned…_

_We had to go through a few iterations – the first suit I constructed for him in their facilities didn’t breathe and he complained about the amount of baby powder he had to go through to avoid chafing – but between that and the improvements they made to his web solution, we really managed to prove ourselves. I think they’re going to support us into the future. I made a point of saying how inconvenient it was to have to commute upstate – I’m not getting any younger, and I pulled the homebody card – so they’re actually going to renovate our backyard. Covertly, of course – I think that the cover story is that they’re landscapers, but oh... We’re going to have a secret space, accessible through the shed, and it’s funded! Entirely covered! _

_They want Peter to come in for physicals now and then – some strategic testing of his capabilities, the limits of his powers. I guess they do this for most new Supers on the scene, at least the ones that lean more towards the heroic side; although, of course there are conditions. _

_They won’t do much to intervene with local law enforcement, for instance. Peter has to handle most of the PR himself. And he is in charge of maintaining secrecy with civilians. I’m on a pretty severe NDA, myself. I think there’s some leeway for significant others in Peter’s case, but not in mine – they warned us with some pretty gruesome examples of what’s happened to other heroes and their families over the years. As though I needed to know that. My imagination’s plenty vivid as it is._

_But we’re okay. We’re going to be okay. _

_I wish Ben could see this._

_\-- _

**2010 **

There’s an opportunity for one last round of bunch with Karene before Liv initiates her move back to New York. It’s not until Liv turns around, waving as her friend’s hybrid car starts to pull away from the curb after dropping her off, that she realizes this will be the final time seeing this apartment in this way, and that almost has her reeling. But she squares her shoulders. California, ultimately, was useful in providing some load-bearing elements to her career but couldn’t give her the kind of advances she was seeking. So, off she goes. Liberating herself from IRB forever. From all the dead-ends and the no’s and the people who never took her seriously, when she told them what she was trying to work on – fuck ‘em.

Liv tries not to think about how it feels like she’s running out of second chances.

\--

“Relax, Lena, you know I’ll get to see you.”

“Mom’s still mad at you for missing Christmas.”

“Mom can cope. She knows I love her, and I’ll make it up to her in-person once I get out there again. I skipped Christmas so Dad wouldn’t badger me anymore to adhere to his _ridiculous_ expectations. Hey, is Adrien still studying for his Physics final?”

“Not sure… hang on.” In the background, Liv hears Lena hollering. “_Adrien?_”

A minute or so of muffled conversation goes by before Lena returns to the phone with a brief crackle through the line. “Yeah. He _grudgingly _admits that they are, indeed, using your textbook. Why?”

“I’m going to send you the answer keys to the student exam questions. Use them to quiz him.”

“What? Liv, is that allowed?”

“Course it is! I wrote the damn thing.”

“If you say so…”

“Is it still okay for me to mail some things to your house?”

She imagines Lena leaning, hip against the counter and with a surly teenage boy picking at his plate of dinner. She can tell that her cousin is debating whether to press on with her ethical objections, but evidently her son’s SAT scores are more important. That, or she just won’t use the files Liv sends along. Olivia doesn’t really care. “Of course –just send me the tracking numbers? I’ll need to make sure I can pick them up. Drivers never bother to wait to see if you’ve opened the door, and there’s been theft lately.”

“You’re the best. _Mwah_.”

“Not too much, hear me? Send the rest in a moving van like the rest of us.”

“These are my personal files, Lena. I don’t trust them in a moving van.”

“Fair enough. Love you, Liv.”

“See you in a few weeks.”

\--

“…Tomorrow we’ll introduce you to the CFO, as well as to Marketing and Public Communications,” the man is saying. Former professor of hers, though she cranes her neck around him when there’s an opportunity to glance at his desk-tag so that she won’t forget his name.

“Thank you so much for the orientation, Dr. Allan. I’m really looking forward to taking Alchemax forward.”

“You’re going to do wonderfully, Olivia. Can’t say I’m not excited to retire, once the transition is over with. But I’ll leave you to it – this is your office, now.”

He pauses at the threshold of the doorway, looking once more around the glass-encased room, before knocking twice against the frame and heading out.

Olivia takes a deep breath, stretches her arms in front of herself, cracking the knuckles on each hand with a _pop!_ Then she gets to work at the computer, installing her usual subroutines, the TOR browser, backdoors to her private off-site servers with all of the extremely-illegal, highly useful programs and documents that she’s amassed over the years. When she’s finished, the sun is low on the horizon and light filtering through the trees – bright green, this time of year, splendid birch and aspen and more. She’ll have to go for a walk of the grounds, maybe tomorrow. Bring a yoga ball in to sit on, or something.

Dr. Allan agreed to leave behind his schematics, a lot of the posters and vision boards for current projects – she wants to read them and the documentation over tomorrow. There’s a big one that’s in-progress that, apparently, they want her actual involvement in rather than just her oversight; something involving partial federal funding, a competition to create some sort of soft-robotics suit that could have applications for heavy industry and nuclear work. Investment from a private consortia that Liv’s never heard of. That’s interesting, and they want her expertise immediately even though the rest of the administrative changeover between her and Dr. Allan will take some time. Thank fuck there’s something for her to pick up and run with.

The stars are beginning to reveal themselves as she tracks through a mostly-empty parking lot. Liv saw a few stray employees and graduate students wandering through the halls or sprawling through the cafeteria with their thermoses and notepads; she waved, introduced herself wherever possible. She got some curious looks, but no matter. They’ll know who she is soon enough.

\--

When the alumni newsletter gets in touch about running a profile, Liv realizes she hasn’t yet officially told May about her return to town. It’d be really awkward for that to be the notice that May receives. 

“So what are you waiting for?” Karene chews her out one evening. “I thought we talked about this.”

“Yeah, well…” Olivia nearly drops the phone as she spins around in the kitchen, flapping a dishtowel in the general direction of her screaming smoke alarm. “What am I going to tell her?”

“The truth.”

“I’ve been busy, that’s the truth. Becoming CEO doesn’t exactly happen overnight. I’m not _avoiding _her.”

“You keep evading this discussion and that’s not what it’s going to look like – it’s been weeks!”

“I mean, calling her is one thing – seeing her in person would _completely _be another. I don’t think I’m ready to handle that.”

“Then don’t. Just call her. The fuck, are you in high school again? You can allude to wanting to make plans in a couple of months or so, see how you feel, but you do realize a key element of remaining friends with someone is, uh, making an effort to see them. Especially a friend who you would jump at a chance to be with at a moment’s notice.”

“My focaccia got messed up because of this discussion.”

“Your bread got fucked because you decided to chat me up about your lesbian angst.”

“I’ll scrape the first layer of crust, it’ll be fine. Karene, we’ve been over this –May’s been through a lot. If anyone’s going to make the first move it’ll be her, and I seriously doubt that’s going to happen at this stage for either of us.”

“Y’never know.”

“Well. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” 

\--

Some months later, in fall, they run into each other at the farmer’s market. Liv is busy picking over late-season tomatoes and fresh ears of corn when she hears May’s voice over the crowd.

There’s some banter regarding Liv’s appointment as head scientist, which May hadn’t gotten around to congratulating her for yet, and how was she doing? Their last phone call had been months ago, once Olivia got up the courage to get in touch after all and May picked up partway through the voicemail Liv was recording. Olivia clutches the straps of her canvas grocery bags a little tighter, tries to sound nonchalant even though her heart is in her throat and she’s terrified that there’s going to be a note of accusation in what May’s saying… even though the only emotion she’s registering is genuine excitement. She could use the company, Liv knows. It’s that time of year when May starts getting dark circles under her eyes, when the grief really kicks back in – the anniversary of Ben’s death is rapidly approaching, and Liv had just been thinking it was time to place a call. This chance meeting beat her to the punch, and that’s not something she’s proud of either.

“I have to go back to work – but do you want to come along? Guest pass, guaranteed.”

To suggest that the Alchemax lab is a perfectly clean and orderly workplace would be a gross exaggeration. The arms are in their first full prototype, after all. The lab, accordingly, contains a riot of wires and silicone, models and partly-assembled arrays and circuits and test pieces. Every square inch of every surface of the work room is covered in something, with the more delicate pieces held in place by equally delicate metal pincers or clamps. There are posters on the wall and plexiglass windows covered in scrawlings from whiteboard markers, a low hum from the server room next door needed to power all the computers that told each proof-of-concept part what to do.

“You ever heard of giving the eye somewhere to rest?” May quips, but Liv can hear the awe in her voice. Maybe the envy.

“Are you kidding? Have you forgotten what I’m like, after all this time?”

Shit. Was that the wrong thing to say? She’s trying _not _to call attention to that aspect of their dynamic.

“How could I?” May counters. “Give me more credit. I’ve got a couple decades left in me before I start going senile.”

“Uh… would you like a tour?”

“How much are you allowed to show me?”

Now that’s something fun. Liv lets a grin spread across her face. “As much as I want.” 

\--

May starts visiting a lot once they’ve reconnected in person. First every other week; gradually up to every other day. Liv collects her from the lobby and brings her back up, May hopping up on the last free counter when she gets there and talking with Liv whenever she’s on break. Sometimes she stays and works, connecting to Alchemax’s Wi-Fi, because Liv is always impatient to tug her goggles back down and hurry something to the fabrication room or run another debugging cycle on the code. But Liv slowly gets used to having May around. Feels like the old days. They talk about some of the books Liv had posted out, ones she’d bought for May from little shops in California – Mary Oliver, Walt Whitman, Audre Lorde. “Did they make you think of me?” Liv teases.

“Of course!” May laughs, putting a hand on Liv’s shoulder, and Liv’s heart skips.

“She seems genuinely happy to see me,” Liv gushes to Karene on one of their calls. “And I… I dunno. The physicality is there. I think she’s flirting?”

“Mm. Well, is that a good thing?”

“Stop sounding like you’re cautioning me.”

“Last month you call me panicking about the fact that you ran into each other in public, and now all of a sudden you’re analyzing her word choice. I’m just saying, if you’re misreading this it’s going to be me who has to pick up your pieces.”

“Things are different.”

“Ain’t they always? Good luck, I suppose.”

“Hey. Thanks for listening.”

“You’re smart, Liv. I just hope you can be on this front too.”

\--

The season wears on. The maples shift tone until they’re all an aching crimson. Liv kept getting leaves from them caught in her hair while she’s biking to work, and May draws them out each day as they travel up in the elevator. Liv watches May out of the corner of her eye and tries to intuit the exact number of seconds that May spends touching her, attempting to discern whether May is lingering or just kindly preventing her from looking more bedraggled than she already does.

She realizes she hardly knows a thing about what May’s life is now that a few years have gone by since Ben passed. No idea what she’s been up to, watching as the older woman closes her laptop and tucks it away inside a bag; so she asks.

“I’ve been able to start my own lab again,” May replies. 

“_Really?_” Liv’s mind starts racing – maybe Alchemax could draw up a small contract, something collaborative. “What’s the funding structure? The size?”

“Only really needs to be for me – small enough. Funding’s public.”

No amount of prying is enough to get much more detail out of May after that, although she admits that she’s working primarily in material science. Textile like she’d always dreamed of, to be specific; small-scale bespoke pieces. A bit of dabbling with practical assistive tech. It irritates Olivia, a niggling little passing thought about how, of all the times to be _principled_… For the millionth time she’s glad that she is the authority in her own lab, that she ultimately enforces confidentiality however suits her. But May can be so stubborn when it came to things like this. So she changes the subject.

“It’s not right that I never see you outside of business hours,” Liv cracks, only partly joking.

“So have me over, then,” May responds.

The next days are a derailed blur of recipe selection and grocery shopping, accidentally getting bundles of herbs twice over. Karene entertains Liv’s flustered texting, asking for help narrowing things down.

_Is it a date? _Karene probes.

Liv avoids giving a direct response. 

On the actual day the weather is chill – the kind of temperature where all the New Yorkers walk around in their wool peacoats, still shivering because the wet has gotten into their bones and they’re still adjusting. Liv invites May to the apartment for some ciders and the barbeque jackfruit she settled on bubbling away in the slow-cooker. Only, May walks and gives Liv her coat to hang up, casts an appreciative eye towards the kitchen and the half-prepped veggies on the cutting board, then walks Liv back into a wall with one hand pressed no-nonsense against her sternum.

“Can we?” May asks, still a good foot between their faces, all electrified air.

She can’t breathe.

There’s no way. This isn’t happening.

Except it is.

“God, yes–” Liv blurts.

“Thank God for that,” May mutters before leaning in, and _oh, _her mouth on Liv’s is a revelation and then some. Warm, soft, a little chapped maybe but if they weren’t it’d be a surprise at this point in the season, and May moves her lips to Liv’s neck, and she nearly cracks her head into the wall. Her hands are on May’s shoulders – are they clenched? – and she wants May to be everywhere already, the weight of her, _something, _but it’s gently uncompromising, agonizing, honey stings, electric syrup, the same body-fizzing excitement as the first time she got a remote neural synch to the suit. So much slower than she thought, once she internalizes that this is happening. So much kinder for all that May is insistent, her hands skimming down Liv’s sides until they come to rest against her hips and press into them, pinning her down. Liv is shot through with _craving_, so much sensation it’s nearly overload. Holy shit, she’s awake. And once May starts mouthing words directly against her skin –

“It’s been a while. Sorry if I’m rusty.”

Liv chokes out a laugh that turns into a moan, tilting her head back to give May better access. “You’re plenty enthusiastic from where I’m standing--”

“Yeah, well…” May leans back enough that Liv can see the crow’s feet crinkled at the corners of her eyes. “Didn’t figure you’d be staying that way long. Might’ve been presumptuous.”

“Educated, more like.” Liv takes a shaky breath then says, “Can I kiss you back?”

“_Absolutely_.”

She’s alive, solid, warm; and for once, Liv finds herself around someone who isn’t afraid to ask for what she wants, which made it easier to do the same.

There’s so much she’s wanted.

\--

Later, Liv piles jackfruit into tortillas for May, dolloping on sour cream and shreds of lettuce, chatting about the relative merits of a slow-cooker when it’s needed.

“—and thank _God _slow cookers have a keep-warm feature, right?” she finishes, turning to look at May; she’s smiling at her with a hand propping up her chin, more relaxed than Liv has ever gotten to witness. 

“I think I’d do this again. It took us long enough, didn’t it?”

“...It’s a date?”

“At our age? Sure, why not.”

Liv pauses, turns back to the food on the counter. She bites at her lip, something she knows needs to stop but… old nervous habits die hard. “I’d accepted this never happening. If it’d been anyone but you I would’ve tried to sleep with you _years_ ago.”

“I’d guessed.”

Instead, Liv crosses the kitchen to sit down next to her, putting a plate of food in front of them both. Her fingers twist together – another nervous habit.

“If we’re going to do this,” Liv says, calculated and careful, “I’ll be as good to you as I can.”

“Well, I should hope so.” May reaches over to place a hand over top of Liv’s, which still. “You know I’ll do the same. I’m… this is going to be an adjustment. Probably for both of us, definitely for me.”

“You know I work too much. And I’m not just going to be able to drop all of that.” Even to her ears, it sounds like a pitiful excuse; but Liv’s serious, maybe a little too defensive or defiant. But it’s the truth.

“I’m retired, mostly. I set my own schedule. We’ll figure it out,” May replies, squeezing. Liv turns her palm up so she can take May’s hand too, and tries to smile. There’s no going back from this. They’ve both got so much momentum, and it’s impossible to say whether it’s even in the same _direction_. Liv feels unmoored, somehow; her trajectory thrown off entirely, but she’s sated and heavy with something she knows could mess her up later, and she’s so fucking _happy _and so fucking _scared_.

“Our food’s going to get cold,” Liv says. “And at this point we’d deserve that, wouldn’t we?”

\--

_Is it a date?_

_And HOW, _Liv finally messages back, five days late.

\--

**2010 - 2016**

They’re together for a long time.

A few years in the early 2010s that are a blur, seasons melting together – a time lapse, sped-up, of Liv going to work in the morning and coming back home to get some food going, May showing up a few hours later. They watch bad movies. They read books from the university press, alternative magazines, op-eds, anything they can get their hands on, and then they talk for ages about it. It teaches them to listen to each other. Liv gains an appreciation for the way that May tabulates her points, the way that she addresses multiple parts of a complex argument through her responses, how she often prompts Liv with a question. It makes Liv feel like May cares about what she has to think, and she relishes the chance to say something mildly outlandish because she knows May will lift an eyebrow and say, “Alright, explain.”

Olivia’s long diatribes against the military-industrial complex, rants about the pitfalls of academia which she had to weather for years, her frustrations that none of the research that could really change the world ever gets anywhere… all are humoured by May, and though they don’t solve anything in the course of speaking about it, Liv always feels like the snarl of thoughts in her head gets a little more untangled every time. May shows her student-written white papers on the subject of scholarly communications and open access; zines that get left in bathrooms around the downtown area that talk about incremental change, consciousness-shifting, hope. It helps, a little, thinking that things aren’t all going to shit.

Doesn’t solve everything. There’s a period of about half a year where May isn’t allowed clearance to the usual areas of Alchemax’s facilities – not Liv’s call, but on the insistence of their project investors given the approaching deadline to the suit’s completion – and when it comes to installing the tech in Liv’s body, it’s a nasty couple of weeks. She needs to be able to live-test the tech at all hours, _without_ calling in an intern, and there’s only one way to really accomplish that: do it herself. Sub-dermal implants along her spine. No way in hell May would let her attempt that, much less go through with it; so, Liv pretends she goes overseas with Karene for a couple of weeks, on retreat and then to a conference. Better safe than sorry, even if the projected recovery time is only supposed to be a couple of days, and better to have an alibi involving a lack of cell service to explain the loss of communication. Karene’s not happy with her for that one.

“So I’m supposed to _lie _to your girlfriend –”

“We’re not that official.”

“–Don’t you cut me off and don’t bullshit me. I’m supposed to lie to your partner so you can have some super-secret body mods done? Liv, I love you, but don’t ask me to do shit like this again.”

“But you’ll do it?”

An aggrieved sigh. “Yeah, I’ll do it. Your bluffing better be as good as mine, and you owe me _big _when I get back. I’m talking free accommodations and the fanciest fucking dinner you can muster when I’m out your way. Just promise me it’s a safe procedure.”

“I promise,” Liv says, with her fingers crossed behind her back. "I'm just... I'm really _happy _with her, Karene. I don't want to screw things up, but I can't _not _do this. It'll open so many possibilities, if this pans out."

She gets lucky. There are no complications.

As though to make up for it, Liv ensures that May is invited when Liv makes her final demonstration of the tech at the innovation summit, listening to the gasps of the crowd as her intern raises up off the stage, borne by four slowly uncoiling limbs. Liv feels May take her hand, and she stands a little taller, feeling smug to have her standing next to her. Alchemax gets passed over for the bid a few days later, but it doesn’t matter – there’s still a payout, and May shows her how proud she is of all that Liv’s accomplished. Asks her in the afterglow what Liv’s next plans are. They talk until dawn about the multiverse, how Liv is so excited to get back to what she feels is _really _her life’s calling now that things are taken care of. Sure, it might mean pushing the budget more into the red for a few years in order to fund some of the projects she has in mind, but this is a position in which she has some _real_ authority. What she doesn't say: the suit not getting selected for further development over feels so much like a failure, and that means she went through all of this for nothing. She shoves it into cold storage and tries to forget about it. Liv is around when Peter finishes his stint in her lab, shaking his hand while May blinks away a sudden shine to her eyes. May invites her along when he and MJ get married. 

Liv splays herself along the couch, and May nestles in between her legs, rests her head against Liv’s chest and reads to them both – creative non-fiction, excerpts from the student writing group that May volunteers for, poetry.

“_I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream,”_ May reads; Liv tilts her head back, allows May’s voice to wash over her, until inevitably the book is closed, May turns over, and lets her fingers run over Liv’s scalp to take purchase in her hair, and kisses her long and languid.

“You’re one of the only _really_ good people in the world,” Liv murmurs against May’s lips, and May presses in closer.

\--

_[04/16/2012] _

_Peter so loves being Spider-Man. It’s like I’m seeing a whole new side of his personality flourish. We’ve talked, of course. He told me about the guilt that chews at him from the night that Ben died – but I can’t blame him. How could I? He did the best he could with the information he had at the time. There’s no fault in any of that, no matter how much it hurts. _

_But he’s channeling all of that towards so much good. I am afraid for him, of course I am. I just… feel so much better knowing that I get to stand behind him. He’s not in this alone. He has me, and from the looks of things, MJ. He thinks I don’t know, yet, but I’ve seen the way he looks at her – he sounds just like a little boy again, whenever he mentions her name or anything about her. Some measure of bashfulness creeps into his tone. Any day now I’m expecting him to bring her over for dinner. She’s a spitfire. I like that about her. _

_New York doesn’t always appreciate him, but he loves it so much. Keeps saving the city, over and over. He has Ben’s sense of humor and more courage than I think even he understands. Peter refuses to give up on anyone, or to leave anyone feeling vulnerable or unprotected. I’m so, so proud of him. _

_\--_

_[02/19/2013] _

_Liv got me some unpublished works again, and I am entirely certain that I don’t want to know where she got them from! She claims that it’s her contacts at Caltech who are so resourceful, but I’m doubtful. Still… it is nice. I always manage to tell her part of what I’m working on without revealing the full truth – she trusts me when I tell her that the works are patent-pending, or proprietary, and if it annoys her she at least knows that it’s because I am a principled individual. Her words, not mine. _

_What a strange way to show affection. I get the distinct sense that I definitely shouldn’t have access to some of this research – it’s way above my paygrade, and always perfect for the application – but she’s so pleased with herself on presenting it to me, and I can’t bear to turn down a gift. _

_All the same. It helped me to further enhance some of Peter’s tech, and with how active Green Goblin’s been lately… I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. DRM is stupid anyways. _

_\--_

_ [07/29/2015] _

_It occurs to me that this is likely the safest space to write about what’s happening with Liv. _

_I don’t want to put her at risk, if anyone realizes who Peter is. I think that I’m mostly under the radar, but with some of the villains he’s had to face lately… there’s always the chance that they’ll come after me. I’ve started sleeping with a bat under my bed. If anyone came, they’d be in for a run for their money. _

_He quit her lab, recently, once he finished a stint to wrap up his degree. Officially, he’s now working for the Bugle, going to be continuing on with a Master’s degree. Liv moans about how she’s never going to get another research assistant like him. I was worried things would be awkward, but Peter rolls with it – even calling her my friend, although he was so sweet about my feelings. Kept reassuring me that things are different now if I wanted to call her my girlfriend or partner, and that was nice – although none of those terms really appeals to us. We’re not sure what to call this. All I know is that it feels good, it feels safe. _

_But it occurred to me that she’s in need of protection. I can’t tell her who Peter is – not just because it would endanger him, but because I’m worried about what S.H.I.E.L.D. would do. I don’t think they’d take kindly to what her background check would unearth. Better to just stay quiet for now, keep things away from the main house. Liv thinks it’s so Peter doesn’t find out what we get up to. _

_But oh, she’s good for me. She shares my sense of wonder at the world, but likes to plunge her hands in up to the elbows. Something raw about her I’ve never quite been able to summon up in myself to the same degree. I can be tough, when I need to, but Liv tears through the world, effortless and unapologetically. It’s oddly inspirational. _

_And she doesn’t push. I was worried that she would – maybe some part of me back then wanted her to when Ben first died and she showed up at my doorstep, because I was hurting and it would have been destructive, so easily. But I’m glad she didn’t. Liv waited. That’s the important thing. I know how she’s felt – I’ve known it from the start –but when things started to change for me she waited until I made the choice to do something about it. _

_But she gives me something I need, right now. We’re frivolous, detached – we flirt, and the sex is amazing, and I dare to think that we’re happy even though it’s weighing heavy on me that I can’t move on, exactly, and I also can’t explain why. So for now I’m weighing my options. I can’t tell her who Peter is, but if she ever found out on her own… well, we’d see what happens then. _

_I don’t think I’ve written this freely in years. _

\--

**2016**

And then Liv goes into work one day after a long weekend, exhausted and strung out. Even three days off with May in a cabin hasn’t shaken the mood she’s in, her tiredness. 

She unlocks her office, logs in to her computer, checks her email. Goes to the staff room to brew a cup of coffee. Waiting for the percolator to finish gurgling, she yawns, stretches, rubs the back of her neck and touches the two long scars on either side of the nape of it. Thinks about the others, running down either side of her spine.

Hm.

See, the problem she’s been having, Liv thinks, is that she hasn’t been utilizing all the assets at her disposal. What she really wants is beam-time, but it turns out that without a significant donation, private companies are lower on the food-chain than academic institutions when it comes to any of the existing colliders. Okay, do-it-yourself: for the last couple years, Liv’s been funnelling more and more capital towards designing a collider to specs. Ones that could let her finally make some headway on her theories about the multiverse. An improvement on her doctoral thesis work, given what she knows now from all the research she’s been poring over. Liv isn’t the only scholar globally who’s been looking into this; really, it’s astonishing that _no-one_ has made any progress at all, not even CERN. It feels like there’s a black hole where the proof should be. 

But maybe she should have been looking closer to home. Just because the suit wasn’t selected for mass development doesn’t mean it lacks _value_ – maybe she could sell it to get some leverage at an accelerator. Or use it to build her own. She can still synch, after all, in theory.

Might as well test that though. Just to blow off some steam.

So once her coffee is ready, Liv heads down into Alchemax’s basement. Handprint security, retinal scans, and randomly-generated code access aside, and she’s standing in front of the relevant storage unit with the door ajar and her cup falling from numb hands.

It’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love the idea of textile-based pages inserted into books that could function somewhat like Penny's did in the old Inspector Gadget cartoons, and if anyone could invent that, I'm pretty sure it's May Parker.  
(Vague clapping in the distance as I yell "use your words" at these two)


	11. Transcript - Interview 5.1

**[Transcript begins]**

**03/28/2019 13:15 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**The following is excerpted for viewing by individuals with clearance from level 3 up to and including security levels 5. **

**If level 6 through 7, consult the following folder for an edition without redactions: 0012459-OO-2019. **

**Octavius: **God, stop acting like May’s my fucking handler – she’s my partner, not my caseworker. I have one of those, too. And friends, and colleagues who respect me – What, do you think everyone who worked at Alchemax stuck around because, ohoho, evil? It sure wasn’t the benefits that kept them loyal.

**Interviewer: **You’ve brought up May’s centrality to your morals over the years in the course of these interviews –

**Octavius: **Yes, because you keep pressing. She was a factor. A significant one, but not the only one.

**Interviewer: **Looking back at your track record – your charges list, pending this set of interviews, Dr. Octavius, which you may or may not be exonerated of – that doesn’t seem to be the case.

[The interviewer begins going through a set of photos]

[See photo X-214]

There was the first public appearance of Doc Ock back in Spring 2016. That was the encounter with Spider-Man too, wasn’t it? Cell records indicate that there was a phone call from her to you that same night, lasting 37 minutes and 16 seconds, and that you didn’t make contact with each other for several days. Coincidence?

**Octavius:** Were you assholes watching her house?

**Interviewer:** I’m not authorized to comment. Next, the rout in summer of 2016 at the harbour front.

[See photo X-227]

CCTV from the area shows you about to tear sections of the docks off before you suddenly retreat; we have May Parker visible in the crowds surrounding the piers.

[See photo X-249]

And then there was the assault on IBM’s research facility – allegedly your second, as you’ve disclosed...

**Octavius: **Hey, what’s your name again?

**Interviewer**: I haven’t given it.

**Octavius: **Your problem, then. Chuck, I’m gonna call you Chuck. Or Owen.

**Interviewer: **Dr. Octavius, that’s not...

**Octavius: **Owen, you’re picking and choosing the encounters that involve May Parker – correlation does not equal causation. I can imagine the people you work with have a backlog of materials related to the Fisk investigation that will take years to get through and analyze. I don’t envy any of you that work. But you’re picking apart all of my public appearances and you have no idea about any of the ones that weren’t recorded. Here’s the thing – May Parker was very deliberately kept in the dark about most of the work that Alchemax was doing.

But hey, also, there’s another clue in this part of our conversation for you – depersonalization, Owen, all too common, it’s a survival mechanism for most of us. Everybody separates themselves from the rest of messy, ugly humanity when we need to – helps keep us sane. But if you’ve got powers or heightened abilities and shit to do, people watch you more closely to gauge whether you perform caring in an appropriately public way; it becomes the difference between gaining sympathy or not.

Point being here, I don’t fuck with people I care about, and it’s a lot easier to care about someone if I know their name. If they become real to me. I’ve known May Parker slightly more than half her life. Impossible not to hold her in esteem, given that. Plus, she’s the one who helped me when I crawled back to her house a wreck. I quite literally owe it to her that I’m still alive. 

**Interviewer: **My name is Todd.

**Octavius: **See? Was that so hard?

**Interviewer: **I need to cut you off there, Dr. Octavius. We’re accounting for your crimes, and what motivated them –

**Octavius: **I prefer the term ‘misdeeds’.

**Interviewer: **The term you prefer is of no consequence to us. This one I was going to get to before I was interrupted was flagged. You’ll recall stealing nuclear materials –

**Octavius: **Right, right. The storage unit, the reactor, or the bridge?

**Interviewer: **[Pauses] You hit the – no, no, nevermind. The bridge. That’s one of the more... concerning to us. Were you aware there was a group of schoolchildren at the scene affected? Their bus flipped.

**Octavius: **Right. Yeah. No casualties though.

**Interviewer: **Dr. Octavius, please. 7 children went to the hospital. More were injured.

**Octavius: **... What?

**Interviewer: **There were three serious injuries – stable, but requiring months of rehab –

**Octavius: **No, no, that’s not right, they reported no –

**Interviewer: **Some of them were from out of state, accompanied by a Professor Xavier and his husband, Mr. Lenshaw –

**Octavius: **Why didn’t they report on it, that doesn’t make any sense –

**Interviewer: **Did you not feel that your exploits would inevitably put minors at risk?

**Octavius: **Not ones that didn’t have super-powers allowing them to bounce back. What are you implying, Todd? Mm?

**Interviewer: **Have you harmed or killed a child, Doctor-

**Octavius: **I don’t kill kids, you SICK FUCKS, I’m not a FUCKING MONSTER--!

**[FEEDBACK] **

**[Recording cuts out]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The climactic scenes of this fic are in roughly two parts, and I still have to write the one that's been storyboarded in my own head for months now. I know what's going to happen, it's just... getting it out there. The rest is going to fall into place very rapidly from there. 
> 
> To everyone who's followed this fic since I started writing it, and to any new readers: hope you'll stay with me to the end of this! In the storyline I've worked with so far, Liv has been anything but a super-villain. That's about to change. I hope her motivations will be clear. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading.


	12. Accelerator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olivia embarks on a solo mission to retrieve what was taken from her.   
The shit hits the proverbial fan.

**Undisclosed month, 2016 **

The first thing they did was kill the cameras.

That’s the what, but Liv can’t find any evidence or trace of the _how. _It was clever – a loop of the footage, one that showed up for hours and displays no evidence of anyone driving in or out of the facility. Probably it was installed remotely, and then whoever took the Octo-Suit had ample time to get in.

None of her additional security features were tripped. That either means someone helped them, or that they knew what they were coming in here for and how to circumvent things. Turns out it’s the latter. A security guard confessed to being knocked out, but he didn’t see who did it and came to with a splitting headache, which means chemical intervention. Dragging the security guard around and using him as a convenient meat puppet would explain how they got past the handprint and retinal scanners, and there’s enough scrambler tech out there these days that someone with the sophistication to shut down her surveillance without being at the building would certainly have a decoder of that sort on hand.

This was slick, elegant, timed perfectly. Liv has some theories as to who could be behind this, and starts fishing with local investigative internet wonks through Tor for any leads on clandestine operations. She’ll start with the usual suspects. Fellow competitors from the tech summit. Old academic rivals who might have held a grudge. Any of the local supers, hero or otherwise.

Liv’s shocked not at how angry she is, but at how violating this feels. 5 years on the job and this is a major breach – all of her employees get the memo that there was a break-in, but no further details – and she intends for Alchemax’s many investors never to find out, if she can help it. Luckily this was a project outside their usual revenue streams, and one that lapsed years ago. Although it’s prominently featured on their website under “past projects”, she’s given out no new information on what’s happened with the tech for some time. And _even so_. 

There’s going to be hell to pay.

\--

Except in the first week or so, every lead gets shot down. None of her contacts through sources legitimate or otherwise have any useful information. The security footage is a dead end. Checking a few darkweb leads gets her nowhere, except down some creepy rabbit-holes with people who attempt to scam her or proposition her.

“Spill it,” May finally demands, her voice crackling through her landline into the ear of Liv’s cellphone. “You keep cancelling our dates and I deserve to know why.”

“Just shit that’s come up at work, May.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“Mmnh…” Liv groans; it’s the first time she’s not wanted to share, but as the silence between them extends… “I lost… something.”

“Tight-lipped, aren’t we? That’s not your style.”

“It’s complicated, okay?!” And she didn’t mean to snap, but she hasn’t been sleeping well to boot. Keeps waking up, fragmented sleep, shards of rest amongst a fever-bright investigative fervour. One fuelled by panic and anger and way too many energy drinks, which probably also explains the anxiety. “…Sorry. It was important. And until I figure out what the fuck happened here, I’m going to be scarce. It’s not personal.”

“Well, whatever you’re dealing with, it’s eating up all my time with my partner and I would like her back, please.” With a softer tone, May adds, “I’m sure it’s right under your nose, Liv. You’re smart. Wait on the breakthrough.”

Hanging up, Liv resumes staring around her darkened office. When she tugs off her glasses, pulls at the skin below her eyes, she swears she can feel the dark circles there beneath her fingertips. 

Liv reclines in her swivel chair, staring up at the ceiling and squinting through her blurred vision. She dangles her arms on either side of the armrests and kicks her feet up on the desk in front of her, biting at her own lip until it stings and she can taste a bit of blood there. They tell her she’d be legally blind without her corrective lenses, and right now that’s how she feels.

May has more faith in her than she’s capable of having in herself, and right now Liv wants to tell her it’s misplaced – she’s got_ nada_, zilch; abso-fuckin-lutely exhausted every avenue and now there’s just the inertia. Liv yawns, slouching further in her seat. Closing her eyes, she frowns. C’mon. Think. Maybe she could go over the looped footage again, figure out what kind of coding was used to create the false imagery…

The jolt is what wakes her; she must have shifted, and the chair slipped out a couple of inches, dropping her legs and creating that plummeting, sickening _whoop!_ in her stomach that she gets on roller coasters. Liv’s heels skid on the floor, she’s in nothing but socks and those don’t have traction, her arms windmill and grab the armrests and –

_Crunch. _

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking—!”

In her rush to stabilize herself, her foot came down on the glasses which, at _some _point, must have tumbled from a loosening grip to the floor. When she holds them up to her face, blinking owlish with a lip curled in frustration, Liv can just make out that the lens is flat shattered in one eye and the bridge-piece is damaged.

“Great.”

It’s fully dark, now, but in her scuffling the automatic lights kicked in – above her, the octagonal lights flicker on with a buzz and a hum. Suddenly Liv is scrunching her face up and her eyes closed _all over again_, but this time it’s because she’s more _literally _blinded – “where the hell are my…”, she mutters, groping around in front of her for the handle of a desk drawer. Somewhere in here she has a spare set of her old prescription, surely. Or at very least there’s some cloth-tape that she can use to reinforce everything. In the morning, because it is now _very _much night, she’ll wait until the light gets better and… take a bus home? Something like that.

The drawer opens, finally, slides open. Liv reaches in, pushing her long fingers past the office supplies and the paperclips and the rubber-band-ball-in-progress; shuffles through some crumpled pages, why the hell did she throw those in there? Peeking through a slitted eyelid, her hand touches a slim case…

Huh.

Hang on a second.

“Are these..?”

It’s not the vinyl glasses case she was expecting to touch, but a smooth, cool-to-the-touch metallic one. The Alchemax logo is laser-etched on the top; and all of a sudden Liv is very much awake.

She presses a thumbprint to the scanner she set up on the front of these – they were custom, after all, because she made these when she had a budget for something like this – and with shaking hands watches as the case lid hinges open.

Inside are a pair of bottle-green lenses, attached with some barely-there wires to a set of circuit boards. The design is crude. Finished enough to look polished for photos, but cleverly concealing a half-dozen things that were completed last minutes and barely to specs. Goggles, more than glasses, and Liv fumbles out a USB-lightning cord from under a package of candy on her desk and shoves it into a waiting port on her desktop to plug the suit’s goggles in.

May was right about the breakthrough, even if it was accidental.

“C’mon, c’mon,” she mutters, ignoring the start of a stinging headache behind her eyes. If this works, everything is solved. Probably. She watches a tiny green light flicker on, just at the hinge of the goggles and the strap that wraps around her head to secure them in place; charging, then, and within moments the heads-up display should be live.

These were meant to have limited functionality, but that doesn’t mean none. They were an early prototype, proof-of-concept, and for the tech summit she’d had a much slicker set. But these still had a few features. Rudimentary readout-displays. A few zoom-and-enhance type programs, so that she could wear these and fine-tune other elements of the robotics being worked on in the lab.

Most importantly, she’d programmed in a small “find-me” feature. GPS-enabled. Initially it was going to be a passive-aggressive dig at an investor who commented snidely on the maximalist character of Liv’s office, _how do you ever find anything in _here? This is how, Janice.

Now, Liv thinks, as she places them over her face and watches breathlessly as the little acid-green display whirs to life…

Now she’s going to use it to go hunting.

A miniature map appears, superimposed like a hologram for her vision only – crisp, clear, adjusting instantaneously to clarify what she sees. Liv taps along a virtual keyboard superimposed on the air, entering her ID code and the request…

A blip appears. Zooms out, over, coursing from the Hudson Valley where she is and sketching thin glowing lines to a building in the vicinity of…

“New Jersey,” Liv breathes.

Gotcha.

\--

Liv’s not an idiot.

Google street view shows chain-link topped with barbed-wire around an unassuming cinderblock building, but these assholes moved fast and efficient; she’d wager some super-villain hideout is what she’s dealing with, or criminal smuggling ring. Anyone dabbling in black-market tech, though clearly not re-selling via any of the usual channels.

Still, to be safe, once she has the goggles back Liv gets it in her head about reverse-engineering.

It’s not hard, really. For all intents and purposes, these should have ended up with the rest of the prototyping and final-product materials after the tech summit, but it must’ve slipped her mind. Similar to all the back-up files on USB sticks and external hard-drives that she has, an honest error is going to let her strike back pretty effectively. According to best-practices, all drafts should have been securely backed up and the copies, proprietary, kept with the actual products. Thankfully, Liv hadn’t followed those regulations either. What was anyone gonna do if they found out she’d been keeping unauthorized back-ups. Fire her? Besides, some of her best work has relied on recycled bits of code from other projects.

The daytime drive returns to her, and Liv starts handling daily business as usual. By night, though, she splits her time between extra hours in the fabrication lab and time with May. Her renewed focus and energy doesn’t go unnoticed.

“I take it things have resolved?” May laughs, kissing Liv back with as much enthusiasm but a little less vigor. 

“Not exactly, but I’m working on it,” Liv had countered, pulling May in by her waist. “Though tonight I’d rather be working on you.”

What she’s working on won’t be elegant. More skeletal than soft, more carapace than tentacle. But if it’ll let her be more durable, agile… Liv will take all the advantage she can get. Pincers that can grip, tear, and grasp are all she really needs; plus some way to move 3-dimensionally. Pair that with a body-armour element and some determination, and she’s going to take back what’s hers.

Bastards won’t know what hit ‘em.

\--

No really. They won’t know what hit them.

The overall effect of the final design, Liv decides, is unrecognizable by Alchemax standards. Which, really, is for the best. Its clunky, inelegant – gives her a silhouette similar to something comprised of polygons, with a re-purposed flak vest across her chest and back covered in wires that swoop up and over her shoulders and link to the main body of the device where it rests against her shoulder-blades. The concept of “extra arms” remains, but is expressed more like... crayfish, as opposed to octopus. Fine by her – the fewer associations remain between her company and this planned excursion, the better.

She’s scoped the joint – the security company affiliated to the complex she’s hitting has laughable firewalls, and if she can find or create a stripped wire to the system, she’ll be able to temporarily freeze the central computer’s commands, HCF-style. Might do some additional lasting damage that can be concealed as a blown fuse, if she’s lucky. There are even a few high windows – someone beefy might not be able to fit, but gangly or not? Liv wagers she’ll be able to shimmy through, regardless of how much yoga and foam-rolling she’ll need to iron out any kinks in the aftermath. But Liv doesn’t particularly care. They’re going to know the damage caused when she’s stolen back as much of her shit as she can carry with her; the suit at bare minimum, more if she can manage it.

Can’t do a damn thing about her hair, though, she thinks – the most she can do is scrunch as much of it under a beanie as she can, and let the rest puff out around her shoulders. Slip the goggles on over top for her maps display, key it in to her mobile while set on a VPN for some encrypted support, and head out.

She’s been taking martial arts for the last couple of years. Is brilliant, capable, and at least physically fit enough to kick some ass if she needs it. Plus, with her home-grown robotic support, she’s got some enhancements.

So why the fuck is she so nervous?

\--

There’s no good way to travel, in her condition. Liv ends up settling, of all things, for a taxi – shoves the most of her new exoskeleton into a few duffle bags that she stuffs into the trunk indelicately, and wears the largest hoodie she has to conceal the rest of her tactical wear.

The cabbie gives her a long look in the rear-view mirror when she gives him an address, about 3 blocks away from her actual destination.

“You sure, lady? It’s pretty deserted that time of night. Nothing but an industrial zone.”

“I’ll be fine,” Liv answers. She looks out the side window.

“Meeting someone, or something?”

“Just a long night at the office. Gotta drop some stuff off.”

He shrugs, _suit yourself_, and takes off. After she pays, with a handful of crumpled bills, he meets her eyes more seriously.

“You need me to stick around? Return fare?”

A moment of hesitation before Liv shakes her head. Already, she’s imagining the thrill of buildings rushing along below her; an ability to scramble, to climb, to race herself along powered by four limbs who would be capable of holding apart the halves of the demon core, if it came to that. Or lifting the weight of a city bus.

“Not necessary, but thanks.” She hefts a bag on her shoulder, the strap slipping a little in her sweaty palm.

Almost reluctantly, the cabbie closes his door and pulls away from the curb. Liv can see him shaking his head. Once he turns the corner, she looks around and darts into an alleyway. Starts pulling out the components.

With every piece on, she feels a little more ready. Ready as she’ll ever be.

\--

Somehow, she pictured all of this going a lot more elegantly than it has.

In her wake, there’s a car-sized hole punched in the upper level of the warehouse, near one of the intake vents for the HVAC system. Once she’d made it through the ducts, another hole – and then a series of unconscious guards. Some of them have body armor, but one she’d torn their helmets off and made judicious use of a wall against their skulls… well. They weren’t much of an issue.

What’s spiked her adrenaline and got her breath coming short and sharp is the calibre of weaponry they were all packing. She’s disarmed the guards, but there were a lot of guns. Clever ones, too: a few plasma, a few making use of standard bullets. Ear comms, with wires trailing down behind their chest shielding. That means whoever’s funding this has some serious leverage.

From a high vantage point, Liv stares out over the interior of the cavernous space that the interior of this warehouse is. Several layers of walls between her and the outside world now – no outward facing windows, here. The outward appearance of this building was a _façade_.

She flips the keycard, swiped from one of the guards, on its lanyard in and out of her hands. Flip-flip. Flip-flip. Whoever this person was they had high clearance. Three sets of pass-card access doors. A goober attached on a keyring to the lanyard, one that generated a random code every thirty seconds or so, one that needed punching in. What she’s looking at are several high-density storage units, similar to cargo crates for long-distance shipping, but their walls don’t look terribly well-reinforced. No patrols, or at least none that she can see.

Personally, Liv is shocked that they didn’t have a handprint scanner.

She jumps form the scaffold, lands heavily on the floor about three stories down – the impact gets translated with a _crk-crk-crack! _Chains all the way up her modified exoskeleton and she hears something metallic _– ping – _off into a corner.

Liv winces.

She better find her suit, because this one protected her so far but probably won’t for much longer.

Ditching the pieces of this thing in various dumpsters on the return trip gets added to her itinerary.

Liv slips on her gloves – the black ones, with all the micro sensors embedded in the fingers and along the palms.

And then she activates her goggles.

Her vision goes from moderately accommodated to completely enhanced with a soft _whrrr_ as the software boots, and a ripple of green light passes in front of her vision. A few popup readouts – temperature, ambient humidity. Suddenly she gets a mapping of distances, with a twitch of one finger; leylines, distance, angles, calculations scrolling through. Another tap of the same fingertip against the base of her thumb, and the lines decrease in opacity.

She reaches up into the air, with her hands posed in front of her as though for a keyboard…

Passcode, ID tag.

A blip in the radar.

To her left.

Liv takes off at a low jog, the exoskeleton jostling awkwardly around her.

She’s scanning, skimming the exterior – each of the containers packed into the space are an unassuming matte grey or rusty-orange or blue colour, and she can see no identifying marks for the company or organization that might own this shit. There are mag-lev tracks in the floor; further evidence of some serious coin going into this place, if they can levitate the containers straight inside.

An ascending tone; left again. She pivots on a heel, has to overcorrect when the suit throws her balance – continues barrelling forward through the aisles. Descending tone; right. The frequency of the blips is growing faster, which means she’s getting closer.

Behind and above her – a clang. Distant, but still.

“Fuck,” Liv curses, just as the beeping becomes a single, atonal whine.

In front of her.

Straight ahead.

She looks up at the container, printed in military block lettering: A-42, next to an airlock-style door.

Well.

There’s the handprint scanner.

“_Shit_—”

No time for subtlety. She taps along the air in front of her, on a keyboard only she can see, and abruptly her vision _shifts_.

A cascade of pixels, a swooping sensation, and the innards of this container are laid out for her in simple x-ray fashion. She zooms out a layer, the goggles scanning – and she hears a brief ping close to her ear, as the Octo-Suit comes into range. But she can’t synch up to that without losing her control over the exoskeleton she’s wearing… 

“C’mon…!”

A bead of sweat rolls down her nose and she resists the urge to reach up and scrub it away, not willing to lose the command series she’s activated. She scrolls out, scans the exterior layers of the container she’s looking at. A weak spot. In the side panelling, far from the door on the container. Joints, in the overlapping plates.

She races around the corner, skids to a halt, pinpoints what she’s identified.

Rearing back one of her arms, the pincer claw opening and extending, Liv punches forward –

_CLANG_!

Her armature bounces off. 

A strand of her hair has escaped, trails wobbling in front of her face. She puffs up her cheeks, blows _out, _winds up again—

_CRUNCH_.

Much better. She wrenches to one side, then the other, wiggles; a space just wide enough for her narrow frame slowly cracks into being, metal bending and squealing under the pressure that Liv exerts steadily.

When she can go no further, she wriggles, twists. Extricates herself from the suit, for the time being.

Liv’s heels hit the smooth, concrete floor. Another one of those distant clangs – a muffled shout, somewhere far up and away, or maybe she’s imagining it? She pulls the goggles away from her face, just long enough to wipe away the perspiration in danger of fogging her vision up, and replaces them.

Liv taps the side of her goggles to switch to night-vision mode, looks around – coast seems clear – and ducks inside.

\--

The thing about living in a world in which superheroes honest-to-God exist is that there’s a level of unpredictability thrown into with respect to daily life. Another set of factors to take into consideration – take your household expenses. Most insurance companies cover both Acts of God and Acts of Super-beings as a clause, although you might have to fight in the courts to get any sort of collateral damage expenses covered. Property taxes depended on the likelihood that you would have to rebuild said home due to unnatural disasters. A hero was considered to decrease your liability in some areas, while raising it in others.

Whatever major you’re planning to declare, the college or trade school you plan to attend, these are all impacted by all the usual factors – distance, in-state versus out-of-state tuition, prestige, entrance requirements – but also things like _proximity to the nearest local superhero headquarters. _Or _depth of diplomatic ties with S.H.I.E.L.D operatives_. Or _typical supervillain activity levels_. Shit like that. No one can do a thing about the global threats, but the local ones can and are considered.

Sure, New York has become known in recent years for relative safety thanks to Spider-Man’s intervention, but it sure as hell wasn’t always this way. It was never as bad as Chicago, but it was never as good as, say, Topeka. The boring, out-of-the-way cities that don’t attract quite so much capital, or crime, or masses of people.

Liv wanted a fresh start, a chance to get out from under a faculty that no longer supported her ambitions. Caltech was among the best scientific research institutes in the world, no question about that, but they were also notoriously conservative when it came to getting involved in projects which could attract undesirable attention. Like, for instance, Liv’s entire body of study. Interdimensional portals? The multiverse? Primo villain bait. Catnip for the criminally insane. Her faculty administrators kept on blathering on about necessary checks-and-balances, an overabundance of precaution taken, blah blah blah. They kept telling her no, and she got tired of hearing it. Too risky? Risky to whom, in comparison to what? Green Goblin’s experiments? Or whatever that shady Kingpin motherfucker was doing in Brooklyn these days? Apparently no one bothered telling Tony Stark _no_, despite the frequent consequences of his technological tinkering. Alchemax at least gave her a chance to get experimental. But she hadn’t considered the possibility that other locals might be keeping tabs on what she was up to. 

As Liv gets her bearings inside the container, and looks around, she considers for the first time that if this little excursion makes the news? If she’s identified as the perpetrator? She’ll have a damn hard time figuring out which side of the fence she lands on. Probably the criminal one.

But whoever’s got this set up stole from her first. May this serve as equalization.

\--

To her right, she sees it – the suit, impeccably furnished on a stand, encased behind some sort of glass array and hermetically sealed to protect the instrumentation. It makes her breathless to see again. All stopped up.

The arms have been posed, life-like, and Liv gets a prickle down her spine. She’s suddenly, acutely aware of all the subdermal sensor implants, from the nape of her neck down to the lowest dip in her back. The accoutrements and optional industrial fittings for the end of each flexible arm are here too – the buzz saws, the pincer attachments, the drill bits, the precision instruments. The possible applications for the suit, as presented at the demo, ran the gamut brute-force work or delicate microscopic activities. Everything along the wall is orderly, neatly inventoried – the packaging is the same, only the labelling has been updated with a series of printed and bar codes. And all the Alchemax logos have been covered up. But still – it’s _all here_.

Yet as Liv reaches towards the control panel that’ll let her take back what’s hers, something else catches her eye. A glint, a curving edge. And as Liv turns her head to look down the length of the shipping container, the rest of what’s packed on shelves and hung up on walls grabs her attention.

First, there are a few other pieces from the Tech Summit that she recognizes. A suit that allowed the user to direct a series of acidic compounds in a streamlined way. Another based around nanotechnology; Liv can see an oil-barrel full of the things, along with the headband which could allow a user to control the nanobots mentally. Laser-based blades, some of which could be mounted on gloves.

But second, and more ominous – she sees a set of serums. Cautiously, she sidesteps – the suit’s not going anywhere, now that it’s in her sights – and Liv picks up one of the vials. What she reads nearly makes her drop it. _Green Goblin _is printed on the label – and next to the others, _Lizard_, and _Roxxon, _and a sealed cryo-chamber that just reads _Venom_. Liv might not recall the particulars of those, but she knows that Lena gabbed over the phone with her about some of those names – villains, all of them, and she’s staring at _samples_ from them. Bioweapons. Above and below the vials – those, they’re Green Goblin’s grenades. Right next to those are guns, but the bullets are enhanced. A set of drones with the Tinkerer’s signature all over them.

Whirling around, Liv scans the rest of the shelves. Weapons. She’s surrounded by _weapons_. 

Reeling, Liv whirls around and looks towards the door – there, on a strap affixed to the wall, dangles a binder. Plain covered, but it has to be an inventory…

Sure enough.

Within the binder are a set of tabs, and she flips to the first.

“Heroes Contingency Program…” Liv mouths the words, before her eyes alight on the name printed below. “Subject…”

Spider-Man.

Flipping ahead a few pages: known abilities. Detailed diagrams, clip-outs from the Bugle of photos and articles describing the battles and their outcomes. Notes on strategies that Spider-Man had employed.

Next tab. Known weaknesses. Medical notes on injuries sustained in fights. Close-ups, grainy and indistinct, on open wounds peeking out.

Next tab. Psych evaluations. Reports that are too long or detailed to make sense of at a glance, but they’re all professionals and she catches a few key words. _Martyr complex. Excessive altruism. Obsessive compulsion. Possible PTSD. Monitor for trauma. _

She skips ahead.

An inventory, like she thought she’d find.

With details on how each of the weapons in this locker could be applied.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Liv mutters, feeling her brow crinkle.

Returning to the front of the binder, Liv looks for the verso. Someone’s clearly prepared for something big, but…

She sees it.

Liv would recognize that logo anywhere.

Any American would at this point. Helps that they included the acronym.

_S.H.I.E.L.D._

They’re prepared to kill Spider-Man.

And the container is full of tech that would let them do it. Eat their own.

If the so-called good guys would do this, then there are no good guys.

Liv pulls her attention back to the rest of the tabs. The Psych section of this briefing folder takes on new meaning. Suddenly, she wonders how many other containers here are for the supers – probably all of them. This is a program. There are multiple contingencies. Countless subjects.

_Identity_.

Liv reaches to flip to those pages with trembling hands.

\--

From outside the container, a sudden shift in the light quality – everything goes red, as the lights outside flare on, and Liv has to squeeze her eyes shut. 

A klaxon starts up.

And Liv hears the sudden tromping of countless sets of boots.

\--

“_Shit –!” _

It’s a good thing the binder is attached to the wall, because Liv drops it instantly. A fist to a button, hammering home, and the case around the suit is raising – too slow.

Olivia drops to her knees and scrambles in, pops up with a gasp. She keys the goggles to switch them off of night-mode, types frantically across the keyboard to issue a series of commands in the coding language she developed for the suit. Blinking away the dots swimming in her vision, she sees a light starts to blink on near the top of the pack that the arms all feed into; a scrolling light, flashing up and down the interior of the pack and a light whirring noise.

Liv peels off the vest she’s got on, stripping down to the bodysuit that she put on underneath – she drops it to the ground, before picking it up with a curse. Balling it up and shoving it into the bag slung across her torso is the most she can manage, before she’s fumbling open the straps and clips and fasteners of the harness.

The alarm outside in the rest of the warehouse keeps wailing.

Liv enters her passcode and sucks in a breath –

She suit connects. She feels each node light up, tailbone to the top of her skull, in a cascading ripple. Shivering, shuddering, her vision blurs out for a split second as all of the arrays line up. A feeling that she’d half-forgotten comes over her – floating, lightness, a sudden extension of her perception through to the end of the four extra appendages she suddenly has.

They straighten, flex, strain, curve down and contact with the floor. Liv gasps, still adjusting– but the limbs keep her up, even though she hunches over herself for a moment.

Outside, boots – rubber soles squeaking on concrete. Drawing closer.

Fuck it.

Liv reaches behind her and grabs a few grenades. No idea what they do, but it’s probably _something_ useful.

\--

Infrared shows up four of them, taking positions just outside where her other suit is, lifeless and hulking.

A split second before she’s calculated an angle from which she can exit, and Liv takes a deep, steadying breath.

The arms lift above her head, grip into the ceiling of the container with ease, and she hoists herself up until her feet dangle below her, a few feet between her soles and the ground.

She exhales.

Two arms shoot out from either side of her, grip the sides of the opening she made in the upper corners, and she tucks in her arms. Ducks her head.

As she squeezes through, narrowly, at the top of the gash, Liv tosses a few grenades to the sides.

A _bang, _followed by a _hsssssssssssssss – _clouds of thick, lime-green smoke curl out.

Below her, she hears guttural shouts that rapidly devolve into coughing.

Laser-sights swing up and through the smoke, drawing beads into the air.

“Oh mother-”

She doesn’t get the word out of her mouth before a laser swings in her direction. Liv sucks her stomach _in_, flings herself _back – _a shot rings out, and a net erupts with bolos attached to the corners, whipping itself in a spiraling arc out of sight.

Clinging now to the top of the container, Liv’s vision darts around – fuck it, she’s going to have to leave her shit behind, no time to destroy it. Her eyes catch the catwalk; she zooms, enhances with the goggles.

There are six bodies jogging into place along the upper catwalks, arranging themselves in a lineup, already getting their sights on her. Liv can see the door she entered from, and they’re all in her way.

A tight, nervous grin creeps onto her face.

Like riding a bike, right?

You never forget.

The arms spring, fling her forward fast as she can _think _it – she gallops, builds up momentum, hears a set of shouts. The ends of each tentacle clamp onto the edges of a container and _whip _her forward – Liv careens through the air.

At the last second, she lashes two arms forward while tucking the others in closer to her body; they catch on the bottom of the catwalk.

She swings, physics helping her, flips up and over – upside-down, she can see the look of shock on the soldiers’ faces as she appears _behind _them, not where they expected her to be, their heads half-turning to track with the blur of her body through the air.

As her heels connect with the handrail, the other two arms reach out. Coconut-crack a pair of heads together.

The bodies those heads are attached to drop.

Liv hears a shout, looks sharply right – three more on that side, muzzles of their guns swinging towards her.

Tucking in, she rolls forward; she caught a glimpse of _something _in a hip-holster on the next closest goon.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t latch onto it – wasn’t able to draw an accurate enough bead on it.

Fortunately, she _does _connect with his thigh. In her mind, she thinks _flex_; and the arm pivots.

Screaming, a third man collides waist-first with the handrail. The wind knocked out of him, his scream is cut short – just in time for him to topple forward, over the edge and out of sight.

No time to listen for the sound when he hits the lower level. There are still two more in front of her and – from the sounds of it – another behind.

A gun cocks.

Liv thinks, _down!_, and the arms obey her – beneath her, shooting her up into the air like an octopus jetting itself up through water. She hears a _thwack _– looks sharply down to see some kind of beanbag collide with a fourth soldier, doubled over and coughing, hacking instantaneously.

“Sorry-!” Her companion shouts, the shooter, and Liv sneers in his direction.

“Ever heard of friendly fire?” she snarls, and Liv drops herself to the catwalk surface – sends an arm flinging out to grab him in a chokehold by the front of his tactical vest. “You’d think you’d be better trained than _that._”

She _lifts – _the soldier drops his gun, brings both hands up to try and free himself from her grip.

No use.

“_DROP HIM_,” comes a voice from behind her.

Liv freezes.

Whirls in place, arm carrying the man out – his legs collide with the handrail with a _clang!_ And he screams – until he’s dangling over the ledge.

“I don’t think you want that,” she says, terse and breathing heavy.

Almost makes up for the cold that runs through her, when she sees the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative has narrowed the muzzle, aiming straight for her. Her face, throat, chest, all of them are in range.

She knows him.

“You’re… Coulson, right?” Liv can feel the soldier wriggling, snaps the arm a little tighter so that he’ll feel a little jolt. As a warning. “Huh. So this goes all the way up to the top, does it?”

“Doctor Olivia Octavius,” Coulson says evenly, advancing a step. “Alchemax. Did you forget that you made that tech you’re wearing on contract? We’ve got a legal right to it, if you follow the chain of funding high enough.”

She cocks her head to the side, as though she didn’t just feel another cold rush of adrenaline all through her. Shit. “Dunno who you’re—”

“Cut the shit. Reel him in – slowly – and maybe we’ll go easier on you. Might even let you stay at your cushy job. If you leave us the suit, of course.”

“The suit.” Olivia starts backing off – the door she came in at is behind her, only a couple yards away, and she’s thinking. “Along with all that other tech? To kill Spider-Man, right? You planning to take down Tony too, if he steps out of line?”

Coulson shrugs, not losing eye contact. Shit, he’s good. “There’s a reason we call it a contingency plan. In case one of them snaps. Pressure gets to everyone. Even the best of us.”

“You mean the whole Cap thing?”

“We don’t discuss that with civilians.”

“Civilians discuss it, though.” He takes another step; Liv backtracks one herself. “Why all the secrecy? Like you said – you had a contract. Unless this shit is off the books? That’s it, isn’t it. No one knows except S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“…So what would happen if I let it slip, hmm? Might have to, if you don’t let me go with what belongs to _me _and my _company_. Whistleblow the fuck out of you. Get some public oversight going.”

“We’d bury it. Same as we did other things.”

At that, Liv has to scoff. “You’re not that good.”

The corner of his mouth twitches into a grim smile. “Oh no? Did you ever wonder why your _research _never got picked up anywhere?”

Liv almost drops the man in her grip, as a ripple of shock expresses itself all through her augments.

“…Excuse me?” She whispers, through a mouth suddenly gone cotton dry. All the feeling, draining from her fingertips; her pulse suddenly deadening in her ears.

“You heard me. We know all about you. And the half-dozen other scientists across the globe, all of you trying to prove something that we got to first a century ago. Let me bring you up to speed: you were right. The multiverse exists. We have proof, a thousand times over, and none of it has ever been published. Why? Because as far as S.H.I.E.L.D. is concerned, the _last _thing we need is a supervillain obsessed with fucking around in other systems.”

Liv isn’t so taken aback that she doesn’t pick up on his advancing a few more inches, feet shuffling carefully; she retreats. Coulson continues, almost nonchalant.

“You think you can threaten us with exposure? If it weren’t for your psych profile, we might’ve offered you a job a decade ago. We know you inside and out, _Doctor_. It’s a shame, really. Because for someone as smart as you are, this was a really idiotic move.”

Liv can feel her face harden.

She’s never felt this angry in her life – so angry that it’s cold, hard, compressed, like the bottom-most depths of the ocean.

So she taps the side of her goggles.

“Not as dumb as you think. Everything I’ve been seeing and hearing has been broadcast and recorded. Secure server.”

Now she sees him freeze, for the first time.

“You’re lying,” he says uncertainly. “I think you’re bluffing.”

“You sure you wanna take that risk?” She sees him hesitate, for a split second, before a muscle in his jaw twitch, his finger move slightly on the trigger. Liv jostles the soldier in his grip. “Ah-ah. Don’t think so. You shoot me, he drops.”

Coulson shrugs, recovering. “I shoot you, he drops, I arrest you.”

Liv pauses, then, thoughts racing. “…You have a point.”

And a second arm darts out, joins the first – together, they _heave, _and the soldier is swung through the air. At the right moment, Liv lets go – he comes flying headfirst towards Agent Coulson, and both of their shouts of alarm mingle.

She sees the muzzle draw up, Coulson lifting his gun at the last second before they collide – and without waiting any longer to see what happens, she pivots on her feet and scrambles forward.

One, two, a third beat and she’s careening around the corner, into the hallway that she entered from – arms reaching above her to _clang _a cover off the ventilation system, releasing her back into the HVAC.

Liv pulls the pin on the final grenade she has, tossing it casually behind her; there’s just enough time to see Coulson, dishevelled, appear in-frame before his eyes go wide and he ducks back.

A smoke screen – this one black, like ink, and Liv thinks _how appropriate_, before she lets her mind shut off and focus on one thing only.

Getting the fuck out of here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -tight-lipped screaming- WELL the shit has hit the proverbial fan in the real world too, hasn't it? I hope you all are safe, healthy, and staying home (and if you are an essential worker, I hope you're getting the support you need and deserve in these trying times)
> 
> This chapter was an absolute pain to write - action sequences are _so hard_ but thank you for your patience if you've been waiting since January for this, and thank you, as always, for reading. 
> 
> Let's wrap this one up.


	13. Transcript - Interview 5.2

**[Transcript begins]**

**04/05/2019 13:15 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**The following is excerpted for viewing by individuals with clearance up to and including security levels 5. **

**If level 6 through 7, consult the following folder for an edition without redactions: 0012459-OO-2019. **

**Interviewer 1: **Dr. Octavius, this is Selma. She’s going to be present this round.

**Octavius: **... Fine.

**Interviewer 2: **Hello, Dr. Octavius. I’m here merely to facilitate and mediate as needed.

**Octavius: **[no response]

**Interviewer 1: **We’ve agreed not to re-approach the contentious topic from last session. But it did raise a significant contradiction between your words and actions -

**Octavius: **You’re going to ask me about Miles, aren’t you?

**Interviewer 1: **Yes, we are.

**Octavius: **Let me ask you this. If you were working with a mob boss who treats murder like it’s jaywalking, and you see some naïve adolescent twerp in a Halloween costume – one who can turn invisible, notwithstanding – helping out a version of Spider-Man, what do you think is going to be the quickest way to acclimate him to the kind of shit he’s playing with?

**Interviewer 1: **An assault with plasma weaponry is the opposite of proportional.

**Octavius: **Okay, alright, fine, I should have been more proactive in telling my staff to stand down or make sure their weapons were set to stun. Look, I didn’t want the kid to get away with my extremely sensitive personal computer tower. I was in control of what I was doing. You’ve seen the footage – usually I’m a lot more accurate if I’m trying to hit something. The misses were deliberate.

**Interviewer 1: **Hm.

**Octavius: **You don’t believe me? Fine. But there’s a big difference between an intimidation tactic or a threat display, and murderous intent.

**Interviewer 1: **What about when you were in the collider itself?

**Octavius: **... That was different.

**Interviewer 1: **What made it different for you?

**Octavius: **Numbers.

**Interviewer 1: **Was that all?

**Octavius: **I figured if I had hit rock bottom, might as well start digging.


	14. Supercritical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A critical mass refers to the smallest amount of fissile material required to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.   
A supercritical mass is one in which, once fission has started, it will proceed at an increasing rate. The material may settle into equilibrium (i.e. become critical again) at an elevated temperature/power level, or destroy itself.

**November, 2018, after. **

_She’s never going to forgive you. _

That thought keeps coming up like a bug in the code as Liv works to finish adjusting the servers, not even looking behind her to watch what her extra arms are doing. She doesn’t need to. She’s on auto-pilot at this point, but there’s that thought again, like a worm, like a missing backslash, a nasty stutter, a flaw that she can’t get rid of.

_She’s never going to forgive you, and you deserve it_. _Think there’s any version of this universe where you’re not a fuckup? _

“What’s done is done,” Liv smiles to herself, feeling sick. “This is all there’s ever been, right? What any of this was for.”

She knows the Spiders are coming. Fine. Let them come. She finger-tip touches the jaw that Spider-Woman keeps kicking, hissing at the pain; swollen, tender, purpling already. Don’t activate what you can’t neutralize. Insult to injury.

What’s the goal here? Let it run. Don’t let it get blown up again. Get what she can. If nothing goes wrong Kingpin will get his family (temporarily) and Liv’ll have enough data to blow the Standard Model sky-high (that’s something she can sell), and she can regroup.

Is she willing to kill the Spiders? Right now she feels capable of anything. Who knows. Cross that bridge when she comes to it. The only one of them that mattered died already a few days ago.

Nothing here to stop her. No reason, really, to stop.

\--

**August, 2014**

At some point only a couple of years after moving back to New York, Liv realizes she wants to learn some self-defense. Can’t hurt, right?

The person who ends up being most effective in her instruction is a woman built like a brick shithouse named Paula, with long hair she keeps back in a ponytail and arms that could easily bench-press Olivia. Liv hears rumours that she goes and does parkour through the streets of Manhattan every morning at sunrise, for fun, and wouldn’t put it past her; also hears rumours in the change room after the workouts that she’s been overseas, but no one can figure out what for.

Paula has them do drills running laps around the room, reps, weight lifting, dead drops, pull-ups; a circuitous route that gets Liv’s muscles searing on their tendons and fries her stamina, so much so that foam-rolling afterwards is a struggle because of how much effort it seems to take. At some point during the exercises, a whistle blows and the woman barks at them to grab one of the foam representations of weapons lying around the room and explain what they’d do with it against an assailant who plans to use deadly force against them in turn.

Liv one time ends up with some sort of heavy artillery, the body of which is the size of her thigh.

Paula is derisive. “You can’t use that, Olivia, the recoil would splat you into the nearest vertical surface, so what do you think you’re going to do with it and your skinny arms?”

Liv’s declaration – “whack them over the head with it” - gets a quirked eyebrow and no verbal response, which means it’s acceptable.

“There are some people who don’t care that you’re women,” Paula tells them all, “or that you have families, or dreams, or a profession, or a loving group of friends. If you’re seriously in danger, it helps to know what response you’ll have – fight, flight, freeze – and how to channel that into fighting when you can win, or fleeing when you can’t. But you have to be able to respond. Responsiveness is what will keep you alive, if it ever comes to that.”

Liv was never good at roller derby – she liked it because it taught her how to take a hit, even if she didn’t enjoy the experience. But she was too bony, too lanky, a high center of gravity and low mass, not padded enough to really excel at that particular contact sport. These exercises at least help her build some muscle. Learn how to use her proportions and build to her advantage.

In a one-on-one brawl, with or without the suit, she’d never win. She knows that. But leveraging her environment, her physicality, and the available weapons to her advantage?

That she can handle.

She learns how to break a grapple twenty different ways, at least.

Liv rubs Tiger Balm into her skin after the post-sparring shower that she takes. Runs her fingers over the scars on the nape of her neck where the tech was inserted, the nodes that allow communication and uplink of her nervous system to the pack, the arms themselves. Idly, she thinks about testing a couple of things out. Combat’s not what the suit was designed for, but it’d be well within its capabilities. Wonders, if it ever came to it, how anyone could throw off the restraint of _four _arms. She’d like to see them try. 

\--

**April, 2016 **

Olivia doesn’t _like _violence. It’s just that violence might become a necessary part of what she has to do.

If she’s lucky, they’ll never know she was lying about recording the conversation with Coulson; hopefully she’s lucky. That’ll put them at a stalemate. They can’t unmask her alter-ego as Doc Ock without risking her blowing the lid on their corruption. She’s not going to be able to avoid the people from S.H.I.E.L.D., but they’re capable of worse things than her. At the end of the day, Liv’s a scientist. She’s adept at handling datasets, not weaponry… but it occurs to her that maybe she ought to fast-track her development on that front. No one needs to know that she’s shitting herself. Maybe it could even become fun. They just need to be scared enough of her to want to run the other way. If she can be overwhelming…

That’s always been her strong suit, hasn’t it?

\--

**October, 2016 **

Liv heaves herself up and slips onto the roof of her apartment, past caring whether anyone’s seen her; her time perception is _fucked_, minutes dripping and oozing, and it takes too long to fumble an oversized shirt and loose pants out of the emergency clothing stash she keeps up here. Olivia finds her eyes darting around the surrounding buildings, panting breath loud in her own ears and listening for the telltale _thwips _of web landing on a surface. Nothing. Coast is clear.

She’s glad she left the window open, although she topples some of her potted plants on the way in; the clay shatters, dirt spilling out, and it’s just _one more thing_ she’s going to have to tend to later. To the fridge, where she fumbles a pack of frozen edamame out, how are _those _the only goddamn vegetables she has in the place, slaps it against the swelling on her jaw. Instant relief. She reaches up to touch the webbing adhered to her hair and hisses when even that simple motion makes the bones in her shoulders grind together, the sensation sharp and bright - might have pulled something after all, _shit_. For the fifth time tonight she counts herself lucky that the arms could compensate for the rest of her, or else she’d be trussed up waiting for the cops.

A clatter behind her, in the living room.

She’s whirling to face it, leaping before she’s aware, watching herself do it, cloth shredding behind her, one arm arching like a hissing snake ready to strike and a second darting out, the final two propelling her at an astonishing speed - May shrieks, topples, falling backwards over the coffee table, _shit_, the darting arm moving now to wrap instead of pierce, pulling May up before she can impact.

Liv isn’t so lucky. She grits her teeth and pushes herself up from where she skidded against the ground, pain flaring renewed through her face and neck. May is wheezing, Olivia realizes, tilting her head up a fraction and glaring forward to see that May’s hands are pushing at the arm compressing her ribs. She’s overcompensated in her panic. She makes sure May will land on the ground gently and releases all the arms at once, retracting them.

“_Jesus_ _Christ, _May - how did you-?”

“A neighbour recognized me,” May gasps, “And let me in - oh _Liv, _what _happened _to--”

“_Don’t touch me,” _Liv snarls, and May, who had been reaching out to her, flinches back. Liv plants a hand on the ground and another on her knee, wincing as she stands, and limps back to grab the makeshift ice-pack.

She hears May get up, the creak of springs as she sits on Olivia’s couch.

“What happened to you?”

Liv gestures at her hair without bothering to turn around; she doesn’t want May to see what happened to her face until she can compose herself. “What does it look like?”

“... Spider-Man?”

“_Yep_.” Liv forces herself to take a few steadying breaths. Then it clicks. “_Shit._ We’d had plans, didn’t we.”

When May speaks again, it’s with a note of reproach. “I really don’t think that’s the issue we should be focusing on here…”

“_Fuck. _This night is a catastrophe.”

She braces herself against her table, turns around. Tries to assemble a look of calm apology on her face, but from May’s expression it’s not working.

“If this is what you look like,” May says coolly, “what condition is Spider-Man in?”

_Seriously?_ Liv can feel a curl unbidden at the corner of her mouth, a sneer. She’s narrowly evaded being caught, this is the closest she’s ever gotten; there was a breach, and she has _no idea_ how Spider-Man knew what the layout of her lab was; she’s going to have to get IT out of bed on a weekday night so they can start scrubbing her servers for whatever data or schematics might have been accessed. And she _hurts_! And May is worried about the _webslinger?_

“I’d expect a little more sympathy.” A horrible, icy, instinctual ping in the back of her mind. “Why do you care about Spider-Man, anyway?”

May isn’t budging, the set of her jaw and her eyes stubborn. “Did it never occur to you that if he’s taken an interest, it means you _might _have something to reconsider in the choices you’ve been making?”

Not this conversation again. Liv scrapes a chair out and collapses into it. “Stop avoiding the _question_, May --”

“I’m not _avoiding_ anything!”

“Yes you are!”

“Because it’s the _right thing, _Olivia!”

Olivia glares back, trying to convey as much fury and hurt as she can, and is gratified when May breaks first; closes her eyes and sighs, furrowing her brow and getting up. She’s expecting May to get up and leave, to slam the door behind her. It’d almost be a relief, so that Liv can do what needs doing, and have a shower, and collapse into bed and wake up tomorrow feeling _better_. But instead, May approaches. Her brows are set, and there’s a frown etched across every part of her face, and the moonlight turns her almost into a statue, and again there’s a nasty ping in the back of Liv’s mind -- that this is it, this is finally the last straw for May, she’s pushed it too far…

Liv watches May reach out and take her chin in her hands, gently tilting her head up. She inspects Olivia’s face, narrows in on the contusions rising; presses in lightly at the base of Olivia’s skull and along the neck and upper shoulders, noticing when Olivia hisses in reaction. Olivia lets it happen, wrestling against the urge to reject what May’s doing.

“I don’t think any of this is too serious,” May relents. “But let me check you over to make sure nothing’s broken.”

Olivia breathes out, a long exhausted rattle and then reaches out for May’s waist. May resists for a split second, and then lets Olivia reel her in; Liv feels her step closer, and lets her head drop forward to rest against May’s front. May pats Olivia’s head, and then _tsks _as her hair sticks to May’s hand.

“You’re lucky I know how to get this stuff out,” she says, and Olivia laughs even though it makes her ribs hurt.

\--

**February, 2017 **

_Fisk _approached _her_. That’s what Liv keeps reminding herself of; it’s not like she would _voluntarily_ hang out with the guy.

One of his goons remembered her from some of her educational videos, back when she did those – arranged a meeting, one where Fisk made it very clear that he wasn’t _asking _her to join up so much as telling her what would happen if she said no.

So she’s choosing to view this as a glass-half-full sort of scenario. He’s a useful idiot with deep pockets, and he’s willing to fund an honest-to-God collider project. If she can croon and cajole and soothe her way into his good side – make herself seem like a minimal threat – then she’ll be able to do some real work on the side, way more important than attempting to resurrect the dead family of a mobster.

Like bringing the multiverse to this one.

No better proof than the kind that’s experienced firsthand, right?

\--

**March, 2017 **

“Would you at least do me the favour of telling me what all this is about?”

May’s not the kind of person to plead – so she ends up sounding irritable, to Liv. Which is _annoying, _because this is _her goddamn apartment_, and what was supposed to be a date night has turned into… some kind of intervention, or argument, with May brandishing the day’s paper at Liv from where she picked it up on Liv’s coffee table.

_Doc Ock makes off with—_and then the rest of the headline is covered by May’s clenched fist.

“I don’t think it’d make any sense if I did.”

“Liv… it all just seems… random to me? You’re taking things that you don’t need to take.”

“I already told you, though – at least part of it’s a grand game of keep-away. I’m trying to be a pain in someone’s ass.”

“Sometimes you’re a pain in mine!”

Liv wrenches her gaze away. “Look,” she says, running a hand through her hair. “I’m trying to prevent bad actors from getting away with some shit. That’s all you need to know. It’s better for you.”

“You think you’re _protecting me?_” May scoffs. “Liv, you’re just one person – and you have _no idea _what kind of resources I’ve got access to, if you would just let me—”

Liv wriggles her fingers, trying for a joke to try and defuse things. “Might be a lot to juggle, but I’ve got extra appendages to help out on that front. Ones that _you _don’t seem to mind in the slightest.”

“Can you, for once in your life, take this seriously?!” May snaps.

A beat.

“Fine,” Liv snorts, staring daggers at the floor, feeling the remnants of her attempted good humour drain away. How to tell May any of this? That it’s about pride, and fear, and feeling that she’s seen a rotten core in something everyone else believes is good – there’s no way to reconcile that! It’d be enough to drive anyone mad, which she’s not – except in the literal sense, as in _angry_.

“Liv… I’m trying to make this _work_. But I’m worried about you, and… I’m sorry, I can’t in good conscience say _nothing_. I’ve heard rumours that you’ve been approached by Kingpin—”

A sharp glance back up. “Who the fuck told you _that_?”

May stares her down. “Is it true?”

“So what if it is?”

May folds her arms across her chest. “There are certain lines I’m not willing to cross—”

“Oh, so you’re breaking up with me?”

Alarm, now, flashing in May’s eyes. “That’s not what I said—”

“No, no, go ahead! You’re just like all the rest. Do you even know what my dad said, what his last words to me were? _You bring shame to this family, I disown you._” The rest of the words echo in her head as Liv fights down bile _– do you think I cannot tell my own daughter on the television screen? If your mother knew, her heart would break. Villain. If anyone find out, you will destroy everything I’ve built._ “He told me not to call again, May. That if I ever show up on his doorstep, the first place he’ll go is the police, to tell them who I am. I bet he’s been looking for an excuse to kick me out since I was 16!”

“You can’t know that –”

“Don’t tell me what I can or can’t know! And now you’re doing the same thing—”

“No, I’m not! I’m trying to _save _you, Liv!”

“From _what?_”

“From _yourself!_” And then May lets out noise of pure frustration, closes the slight distance between them – she’s on Liv, her mouth and her hands, kissing her as furiously as she ever has. Liv has to put a hand out, knocked back as she is into the sofa, tumbling down onto its surface. Then all that occupies her is getting tangled up in May.

Afterwards, both of them still breathing heavily and barely covered up by the throw blanket Liv keeps here for when she just needs to pass out, May takes Liv’s face between her hands. Won’t let her pull away. “Would you stop doubting that I care about you?”

“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Liv says, meaning it.

But when May asks her if she’ll stop, or at least reconsider, Liv doesn’t say anything at all.

\--

**May, 2017**

Prowler just grunts when she offers him a drag on her cigarette.

“Nah, I don’t put that shit in me.”

She shrugs, suit yourself, and wonders when this became her coping mechanism – some sort of internal pollution. Maybe there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.

“So you’re the enforcer.”

He doesn’t respond. She taps ash onto the gritty brick of the rooftop ledge they’re sitting on, grinds the tip out. Plumes smoke out into the sky.

She sticks out like a sore thumb when she doesn’t have the arms retracted, like they are right now – the pale swell of them against any of these reflective surfaces, the mirror of the sides of these skyscrapers? Please. She should think about developing camouflaging tech into these – someone’s invented cloaking, by now, and wouldn’t that be something? The ability to merge into her surroundings as effortless as the namesake they’ve given her. Maybe Prowler’s got the right idea – all darks and bruised violet, leather sheen. Perfect kind of thing to have going on at night-time, when they do their best work. The cape is stupid, though.

“Does it ever bother you?” She asks.

“You kiddin’ me?”

“Does it sound like I’m kidding? Asshole.”

“Pay’s good. Better than good. Beats my old habits by a long shot. If I make enough, I can get out when the getting’s good.”

“You really think it’s going to be that easy, don’t you?”

“Got family lookin’ up to me. One of these days I’ll have to.” He peels the mask back enough for her to see his face, which she understands he wouldn’t be doing if it wasn’t a kind of threat – or maybe a trade-off. He knows who she is. Could be this is his way of levelling. “Can’t breathe in there, sometimes. Shit. And when you’re up this high…”

He nods out at the twinkling, searing expanse beneath them, all the open air of the city. Faint below them, honking and the occasional yell, though any words are all lost.

“…this is what it feels like to be on top.”

“Hmph.” She sniffs. “Goddamn waste of space. You know this entire island used to be full of tidal streams, wetlands, springs. Hundreds of types of trees and soil types. The Lenape people. Now the air will choke you out on a bad ozone day. Up here’s the only place you _can _breathe.”

“Knew you was a hippie.”

“Shut up.”

She can’t look at this city from up here without finding it beautiful, and that pisses her off. You get down to ground level and there’s the people, the toxicity, the blood of it all. How can you not look at the topography that lies underneath everything here and not see a massacre? The ability to enact violence with impunity, and then gain public and court approval for the methodology because you call it progress or justice or freedom. There’s some part of the American mythology that permits for this sort of double-think to exist. And the worst part is that so much of it is beautiful, and Liv isn’t immune from thinking so.

Prowler’s regarding her with some sort of smirk riding the corner of his mouth. Her own face twitches before she can help it.

He gets it.

\--

**November, 2018, before Peter B. **

Maybe, in retrospect, she got a little too comfortable after she had the hang of things - once she figured out the optimal way to fight back against someone who was more or less impervious to bludgeoning, getting thrown off of buildings, and/or having entire sections of said buildings dropped on top of him. Complacency isn’t a character attribute she’d give herself, but looking back… she does realize she’d settled into a comfortable routine, of sorts, getting away with it, the near-collegial stalemates in the battles with Spider-Man.

He’d throw out some snark, she’d get a chance to snip back with cunning threats whose purpose was more to distract from what the rest of her limbs were doing, and he was hilarious. While she never went to jail - had a couple of near misses – she also never actually beat him, just slowed him down enough to succeed at her objectives, or beat a hasty retreat and re-strategize. Besides, Spider-Man had never fought like he was trying to take her out – just neutralize her or stop her from succeeding. She wonders if he ever stops to realize how much the two of them might have in common.

Those encounters were some of the most _fascinating _experiential puzzles she’s ever had to solve - Spider-Man was intelligent, that was abundantly clear - and even when she got back to the lab or to home, bruised and cursing and needing to leverage expensive repairs on her tech, she’d always felt an element of grudging admiration just below her irritation. God, he was a pain in her ass.

Even so, she couldn’t let her guard down around him, even if she believed that his modus operandi was primarily non-lethal. He was either an irritating twerp suckered into pawning his talents for an organization who’d mulch him as soon as he could blink, or he was infinitely more dangerous than he seemed. Depends on how much he knew and accepted in the bargain.

It galled when she realized her own servers and drives had been breached, somehow, but not from a bug or a script or a piece of cleverly-hidden code. Oh no, there was a login traced onto _her _computer, in _her _office, at a time when she knows she was on-site supervising the construction.

But she was willing to admit that if she left a backdoor open, somehow, then it deserved to be exploited. Practically begged for it. It helped her lock everything down in the immediate aftermath of Spider-Man’s assault on her collider; after all, the damn override key could only have been fashioned from the data on her company’s servers. So really, she should be thanking him. If he could get in, S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn’t be far behind. Of course, it means she’ll have to vet all of her graduate interns more closely from here on out - screen their backgrounds with a fine-toothed comb, lest another one of them turn out to have latent superpowers and an overdeveloped sense of vigilante justice. 

There probably is something wrong with her, isn’t there?

Maybe May was right. Too bad Liv can’t just call her up and ask.

\--

**June, 2017 **

The first time Fisk shoots someone in front of her, she has to fight the urge to fling herself up the walls of the alley as a reaction – her instinct to get away. Muscles screaming. She breathes, tightens her core like Paula used to tell them – focus on drawing the breath all the way down to the base of her navel – and tries not to look at the slow syrup spread of blood seeping into the gravel and dust, making a kind of tacky mud.

He tsks, and she sees the dead-fish flat stare as Fisk looks down at the body.

“Get rid of the body,” he says. She’s heard the same tone get used when he’s ordering a car to pick him up. Aaron steps past her, and she realizes he’s the lucky one – he wears a mask. Protects him from revealing whatever his face is doing beneath it.

Olivia can’t remember what crime the poor sucker in front of her had even committed. What infraction earned him this fate.

That night she’s ravenous, but she doesn’t eat a thing.

\--

**August, 2017. **

“Don’t you _dare _moralize at me,” Liv spits.

“There was a school bus on that bridge! There were _kids _that almost got hurt because of you –”

Liv laughs and she hates the way it sounds. “Oh, okay, how is _anything _I do objectively worse than what’s already happening in the world? _Look around, May_.”

“You don’t have to make it worse–”

“Make it worse? It’s almost as bad as it can get! So I liberate some nuclear equipment. So what? Anti-proliferation this, accord that, none of it means shit – you know it, I know it, everyone knows it except the people too scared or too stupid to realize that every world power is saying one thing and scrambling in the background to do another. We’re a warmonger’s word away from everything going wrong, and at least you know _I’ve _got it and not _them_–_”_

_“_Who made _you_ supreme arbiter of good judgment?”

“Like I said, don’t moralize at me just because you don’t want to get your hands dirty.” Liv growls. “I’m doing what I think I have to. You disagree? Fine. But don’t try to make me feel bad about it, because I _don’t. _I’m not the one _squandering_ myself_._”

Has May ever had a gun pointed at her face? Liv doubts it. She’d never wish that on anyone.

Aaron talks about it sometimes with this simmering rage barely contained beneath his surface – the unfairness of it all. A pipeline, that’s all it is, vicious cycles with no way to get the kids out, not really. It’s what they grow up being around, isn’t it? For some of them, it becomes the only world they ever know. Some long-ago echo flares in Olivia, now and then, like a die-in at city plaza, like a lost generation. Depending what part of the States they grow up in, some of the kids like her know what it feels like. Some of them don’t. She and Aaron share a drink to that – the bitter knowledge of how alone they are, having experienced some of the worst of it first-hand. Knowing how angry that makes them sometimes, even if it’s better that way.

May doesn’t ask her to apologize, when Liv slinks home later to find a voicemail waiting for her. The recording is May asking if she can come over. She doesn’t apologize either. But Olivia talks about it, the duck-and-cover drills with the bomb sirens going off all the way through elementary school – how all of life feels like that to her, sometimes – and it cracks her open enough to cry about it, when May holds her. Squeezes Liv’s hands between her own.

Even so. Shortly afterwards is when she decides to stop taking May’s calls for a while. Otherwise she’s going to lose her focus. And she’s almost ready to start building beneath Fisk Tower. The zoning’s all completed.

Liv’s going to strip this world for parts if she has to, as long as it feels like she’s _doing_ something.

\--

**November 2018, before. **

Of _course _the kid fucks it up.

Liv knows it the second the Prowler comes onto the channels, calling her and everyone else to an address she’d know anywhere, where he’d followed that _boy_ they’ve been hunting for days, and Liv curses viciously even as she shucks the outer layers of what she’s wearing and lets the arms unfurl behind her.

She’s calculating everything as she flies along, willing her mind to go faster than she’s travelling. They’re all going to be there, Scorpion and Tombstone and Prowler – shit, is Fisk going to come too? Focus, focus, think – unbidden, accusations that May has hurled at her come crashing into her mind, how this was unsustainable, how someone was going to get hurt; stop, that’s not productive, how the _fuck_ to play this? What can she do? There’s got to be something. She laughs to herself, feeling cold air sting as it rushes past her face, because well, at least she can ring the doorbell. Whatever happens after that isn’t her fault. There are too many elements at play. Too many factors. Liv realizes that this is the _one time_ in her life she hasn’t been able to think her way out of something. The _damn _Spiders, so many of them, a fucking infestation, they’re in her _way_, and now she’s going to have to take care of it…

She’s ripping through the door of May’s house as though its tissue paper and she wasn’t expecting it to be that effortless. She hopes that here, surrounded by the company she’s in, May will understand that she had no choice – Prowler thinks of this as a job, nothing personal, but the others? They’re not here to fuck around. They enjoy this. Will May think she brought them all there? She can’t look at May’s face, doesn’t want to know what she’d see there – something worse than betrayal.

What she does see are a bunch of _children_ and two washed-up adults, all of them in suits. Tea scalding her mouth and throat as she drinks it, taking it all in. Those idiots. They should know better. What kind of example are they setting for these _kids_?

Hard lessons.

They should learn them sometime if they haven’t already, she thinks, and around the boy’s neck –

“Ooh, I think I’ll take that,” she hears herself croon, and there’s hell to pay.

\--

**April, 2016 **

There are these things called rage rooms.

Olivia smashes the screen of a television, watching as it splinters – the glass thinner than she was expecting. Like the crust of ice that forms, opaque and milky, on the top of puddles in the early spring, the ones you can shatter with a light tap.

She blows a strand of hair to the side and winds back up with the bat.

“Just rendered thirty years of work obsolete—”

_CRUNCH_ – she hits the TV set again, watching as part of the plastic exterior pops free. They’ve given her a protective suit, high boots, so she kicks _into _the set – cathodes pop under her heel.

“And you just bury it? You bury all of it?”

She withdraws, steps over the pile of small electronics that she already decimated and towards an LCD monitor. “You have no _right_ to that tech! That’s a fucking abuse of knowledge, set physics back by half a century, you _fuckers_, you got there first and _buried_ it?”

An overhead swing. She misses, the first time, might be something to do with the fact that she hasn’t been able to sleep yet. Going on 34 hours awake – sure, S.H.I.E.L.D. let her go, but what if she goes home and they bust her door down? What if there’s a tracker in the suit she hasn’t noticed yet? A giggle leaks out of her as the next hit connects properly. Cracks spider their way across the display.

“Beat you to something bigger,” she mutters. “So big, so public, you’ll never be able to cover it up. You take my thunder and I don’t even know it? You take my _asset_? Everyone thinks you’re the heroes, don’t they? You don’t deserve this, not any of it, I’m going to take it all away from you and build something better. All you fuckers did was prove I was _right_—”

She spins and goes back to the first television – busted remnants.

Maybe she should be more upset about the fact that the espionage team most closely linked to superheroes has contingency plans on how to _kill_ all of those heroes, but is she really that surprised? No, can’t say she is. And yet she’s livid about the research. Typical. But _that’s_ what S.H.I.E.L.D. took away from her: the thrill of discovery, the rewards that go along with it, all of it. Not just her. All the brilliant minds in her field. Her colleagues, the bright young things who had dreams just like she did. Everyone who built themselves up, put up with sleepless nights and student loans and missing their fucked up families and turning down relationships because of work. All their collective effort squandered. _Wasted_. For nothing. Because the multiverse is real. And the powers that be decided no one got to know.

Olivia obliterates the room, completely, until she’s panting and can barely keep herself up. Until there’s acid in her joints and she feels like she’s about to pass out. Fantastic. At least this way she can drag herself home to collapse, and if she sleeps the next three days, good.

Somehow she thought this would make her feel better than it has. But at least she has an idea of what to do next.

That’s a giant whose shoulders she can stand on.

Maybe from up there, she can cut its throat.

\--

**November, 2018: **

Years later, she realizes something else S.H.I.E.L.D. took from her.

She’d loved working with Peter – he’d had that same spark of practicality and insight that May did when it came to research, letting him focus on praxis rather than only lofty theory or deadened functionality. And she knew how much he meant to May. Seeing his face in the smouldering remains of the first collider… that hits her like a sucker punch, and she has to pretend the fight is the reason she has to catch her breath before she starts the work order to get everything back online.

But she also realizes May’s been lying to her. This whole time. They’re probably the ones who have been funding May’s research, now that Liv thinks about it.

So in some ways, they took away the only person she’s ever really loved.

\--

**November, 2018, after **

Can she be honest with herself?

It’s kind of a central question. The one on Liv’s mind as she’s waiting, concealed, for the Spiders to end up somewhere she can get at them. Or the collider override key. A sick shivery thrill goes down her spine. She wants to, is the thing; when she’s in motion, smooth gliding, whip-crack slick instinct taking over, then she’s not thinking. If she’s not thinking, she doesn’t need to have this conversation with herself.

Tick tock. This is the _worst_ time to be having a personal moral crisis, but here she is. All of this is overkill. The whole damn operation. She knows that as she watches Scorpion get into position, and Tombstone; it’s written all over Fisk’s smug leer where she can see him inside the observation deck, where she left him before slipping between the computers she just activated and the framework of the collider itself. Liv hasn’t seen Aaron since May’s house, but hasn’t had time to ask after him – what would he think of all of this? She’s dying to ask him. He believes in giving opportunities for someone to retreat or withdraw, so she can’t imagine he has no objections – this feels like pouring molten metal down an anthill.

_May’s never going to forgive you_.

Well, Liv’s not sure she can forgive May for all these wasted years, so… fair’s fair, right?

Whirring, impossible noises from below her; the burbling foam of a kaleidoscopic universe rushing up towards her like a greeting, like the all-encompassing waves of the sea. She remembers, long-ago, flinging herself into the ocean, as though California could be an escape, as though it meant anything. Spiders, yelling, getting closer to where she is – one of them, crawling beneath her, oblivious that she’s up here peering down at him. When the hell did she lose the plot? What are her options? Finish this. Win, whatever winning means. Or lose.

Or forfeit. Yeah, that’s another option, right? Fling herself into the portal that’s about to throb across the underside of Brooklyn. Finally escape everything she hates about here, now, herself. Go anywhere. Take them with her. Fuck this universe.

Knocking, banging on the ceiling. Metal peeling away beneath the grip of someone strong. Too bad. She’s stronger. Knock-knock, who’s there? Your friendly neighbourhood Spider-gang…

Can she be honest with herself? Maybe the problem all along is that she _thought_ she was a hero. Or at least an anti-hero. All these years, May was trying to warn her that this is what she was becoming instead.

Heroes don’t do what she’s about to. This is irrevocable. This seals the deal, if she succeeds. If she doesn’t…

Fair’s fair.

Might as well enjoy herself until she finds out which it is.

Olivia sees her opportunity and slips down into the echoing cavern of the collider’s interior. Over the threshold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter summary definition is one that I pulled from Wikipedia's article on Critical Mass.   
Nearly at the end, now. Thank you for reading thus far.


	15. Transcript - Unregistered Interviews

**ADMINISTRATIVE EYES ONLY**

**Transcript: Unregistered Interview**

**05/07/2019 10:42 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**[Transcript begins]**

**Octavius: **Where’s Todd? 

**Interviewer 1: **He won’t be joining us anymore.

**Interviewer 2: **Please have a seat, Doctor. 

**Octavius: **Interesting. 

**Interviewer 1: ** What is?

**Octavius: **You’re going to let my imagination run wild on the subject, aren’t you?

**Interviewer 2: **You do not have authorization to know the details of his absence, so yes.

**Octavius: **At least you’ve decided that pairing up is a more effective configuration.

**Interviewer 2: **It creates a more reliable record.

**Interviewer 1: **Inter-coder agreement for the transcript analysis too.

**Octavius: **Smart.

**Interviewer 1: **We’d like to resume where the last agent left off. Today will be brief, though – only one question. 

**Octavius: **Remind me of the purpose of all of this again?

**Interviewer 2: **Constructing a profile of you.

**Interviewer 1: **Determining your suitability for public release or secure containment.

**Interviewer 2: **Among other goals.

**Octavius: **Like finding out how compromised you are?

**Interviewer 1: **You as in, individuals or organization?

**Octavius: **Already, better methodology. I’m impressed. Organization. S.H.I.E.L.D. You, as in, all of you.

**Interviewer 2: **We’re not at liberty to confirm or deny the extent to which S.H.I.E.L.D. is aware of your current threat status.

**Octavius: **But you admit you consider me a threat.

**Interviewer 1: **Do you consider yourself one?

**Octavius: **Ooh, yes, _deadly_. Nick Fury does, at any rate.

**Interviewer 1: **What Nick Fury does or doesn’t think is beyond us. He works in a different department from us.

**Interviewer 2: **Did you think he was going to be your supervisor? He deals with supers. You have officially retired from that status, as far as anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. is concerned. Which means you report to someone else.

**Octavius: **I should have known you’d be dicks about it.

**Interviewer 2: **The histrionics really are fascinating.

**Interviewer 1: **This is actually relevant to the final interview question, Doctor, so I’ll encourage you in advance to find whatever calm exists within you and centre yourself on that.

**Octavius: **Knowing me as well as you surely do at this point, do you think I _have _that?

**Interviewer 1: **We do, actually.

**Interviewer 2: **You’re as human as we are. Albeit with enhanced intellect and mastery of your particular assistive technology.

\--

**Transcript: Unregistered Interview**

**05/01/2019 9:45 **

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**[Transcript begins]**

**Fury: **So. You wanted my attention, you have it. Congratulations. What do you want?

**Octavius: **So you’re Nick Fury. Nice to finally meet you in person. Someone’s work files can’t help you gauge their presence in a room.

**Fury: **No, they cannot.

**Octavius: **Alright then. I’m here to make a deal.

**Fury: **What makes you think that you’re in a position to bargain?

**Octavius: **I’ve got something useful to you.

**Fury: **That question was rhetorical.

**Octavius: **Me. It’s me.

**Fury: **You? You vastly overestimate your importance, Doctor.

**Octavius: **Me. My brain, my resources, my time, my obligation to you. A contract. 10 years, I’m thinking, of service, and at the end of that duration renewable. Adjustable termination clauses, plenty of conditions so that you hold onto the power in the situation. We can negotiate the terms of my employment. You set the projects. I give outputs to your science division.

**Fury: **You cost me one of my best new agents, fresh out of the field, and you’re offering me yourself in exchange? We expected 30 years or more out of him, and thanks to your encouragement, he sat in on one meeting with me and then quit on the spot. He cited ethical objections to the Heroes Contingency Program. You think a decade of me having to tolerate your bullshit is an equal replacement for that?

**Octavius: **Is the turnover rate a problem for you? No matter, I’ve got a veritable army of grad students, many combat-trained, recently liquidated because of your forced dissolution of Alchemax. Most would jump at the chance to re-legitimize their careers.

**Fury:** Too much liability.

**Octavius:** So screen them. What, you’ll take on the unknown risk of a new super showing up but you won’t try to recruit some malleable 20-year-olds who are scared shitless about making a living for themselves? In this economy? You’ve got the internal video feeds from my facility; send those to your psych department and get them to do some analysis on the most likely candidates for what you need them for.

**Fury: **And just what do you get out of this? Exactly.

**Octavius: **Stability enough to try again. The opportunity not to be wasted on prison. A chance to put my skills to alternate use. And…

**Fury: **And?

**Octavius: **I want my contract to replace May Parker’s.

**Fury: **[laughing] That’s out of the question.

**Octavius: **You give her the option to retire. Nothing owed, nothing due. She gets a chance to rest – only leave me out of it. Just let her know that it’s happened. Compassionate reasons, or something. Her nephew was... Peter was her partner in the business as much as he was her kid. Tell her that’s why.

**Fury: **That’s incredibly altruistic for someone with your reputation.

**Octavius:** Altruism? [laughter] Are you kidding me?! May Parker has been entirely compromised by the death of her nephew! Do you think I want to be working around that? May, watching me like a hawk, for any hint of indiscretion after I’ve agreed to play nicely? It’ll be nothing but a distraction to me. I know what you’re capable of, as an organization. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. You could use someone like me on your side. If I’m on your payroll, I could be.

**Fury:** ...

**Octavius:** Oh, I’m sorry, did that surprise you? It’s an intelligent response to the circumstance I’ve found myself in.

**Fury:** Do you even realize that what we have on you, what you’ve given us, could end you? 

**Octavius: **I’m aware.

**Fury: **So why should I trust you?

**Octavius: **You shouldn’t! Obviously! But did you not hear the part where I get to continue my research and get the fuck away from being locked up? You can put me away at any time, but take this back to your council. I dare you. If you hire me on, you keep your power in this situation and I get what I want. Personally and professionally. At the end of the day, that’s what any of this is about. Right?

**Fury:** [standing] We’ll consider it. That’s more than you deserve.

**Octavius:** Not disputing that.

[He leaves. As he does, Olivia Octavius calls out after him]

Let me know when you’ve made your decision!

\-- 

**Transcript: Unregistered Interview**

**05/07/2019**

**Location: [REDACTED]**

**[Transcript continues]**

**Interviewer 1: **It’s essential that we receive an honest, concise response to the following question. As brief and succinct as you can make it.

**Octavius: **Go on.

**Interviewer 2: **May Parker proves or proved herself to be an active threat to your projects and processes, will or would you kill her?

**Octavius: **[no response]

**Interviewer 1: **We can give you as long as you need to consider the question.

**Octavius: **[no response]

[The silence continues for several minutes]

**Octavius: **I’m guessing you won’t offer any more context than that.

**Interviewer 1: **Correct.

**Octavius: **Nor elaboration?

**Interviewer 1: **That is the case.

**Octavius: **I would.

**Interviewer 2: **So to rephrase: If May Parker had proven herself an active threat to you, you would have been willing to kill her.

**Octavius: **I would.

**Interviewer 1: **To rephrase a secondary way: If May Parker proves herself an active threat to you, assuming your freedom, you would also be willing to kill her.

**Octavius: **Yes.

**Interviewer 2: **Thank you for your time, Doctor.

**Interviewer 1: **I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear this concludes our interview sessions. Welcome to the Research and Development division.

**Interviewer 2: **Before you ask, we received permission to share this with you.

**Interviewer 1: **We’ve become aware that May Parker is mentoring one Miles Morales in the aftermath of the events of November 2018, and that he has become reliant on the technology she is able to outfit him with.

**Interviewer 2: **Technology, I’m sure we don’t need to tell you, whose creation was funded by S.H.I.E.L.D. and therefore remains proprietary material even if she is technically now off-contract – her discoveries or innovations remain in her physical possession, but all patents are held through the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization. We intend to monitor the production of any new items, and to acquire them – by force if necessary – if they would be deemed a risk to civilians or to the national interest.

In no uncertain terms does this mean that we have a vested stake in the status of Miles, the uses he puts our assets towards, and the particulars of his relationship with May Parker. If what Nick Fury shared with us is true, then you have a... very unique placement with regards to her. We would like you to put that to use for us.

**Interviewer 1: **Before we give you this contract, we need to know whether you have any retractions to issue for the content of any of the interviews we have conducted this far.

**Interviewer 2: **Additionally, we need to know if you have represented yourself completely, accurately, and faithfully in all of your sincerely held beliefs, thoughts, opinions, and expressions thereof. We are willing to accept eccentricity and a certain amount of... artifice. We are not willing to accept duplicity. 

**Interviewer 1: **So, Doctor – do you stand by what you have said?

**Octavius: **When do we begin?


	16. Epilogue: Chromatophores

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chromatophore is a pigment-containing and light-reflecting cell found in a wide range of animals, including cephalopods like the octopus. The process of rapidly changing colour as a form of camouflage is called physiological colour change, or metachrosis.  
Liv and May reflect on their findings and present limitations.  
The process of drawing conclusions is ongoing.

**May 7, 2019**

“Do you think they believed what you said?” May asks.

“Enough of it. There’s enough truth present that they’ll have a hard time figuring out which parts of it were genuine, exaggerated, or undersold, assuming they even bother going over it with a fine-toothed comb. At any rate, they believe I’m conniving, self-serving, remorseless, and beholden to you to the extent that I get something out of it. Two-and-a-half out of four isn’t bad. The half of a thing that’s true is that I’m beholden to you. There’s no qualifiers there. In case it wasn’t clear.”

“Mm. If what you say is true, they’ll kill you if they find out. Probably make it look like an accident, or your own fault.”

“I’m approaching end-of-life anyways.”

“Wow. What does that make me?”

“Ancient. Absolutely decrepit. Antique, if you want a kinder adjective.”

“Rude as always,” though May is smiling, and there’s a shine in her eyes that reflects the lights from downtown Manhattan a little too brightly, wavering.

“Well. That’s what people expect, isn’t it? Why try to change me now. Let ‘em put me to good use before I’m gone.” 

But Liv lets May tuck into her, head on shoulder, hand on hand on knee for balance.

“What’d they make you promise?”

“Nothing I want to repeat. Nothing I could do. God, I’m glad I’m a good liar.”

“What was it?”

“Some bullshit about how I was using you. That I would be willing to kill you, if it came to that.”

May stiffens against her. “As if I pose any kind of threat to them.”

“You’d be surprised what they consider a threat. I’ll never understand their perspective on things.”

“I’m afraid I probably would.”

“They suppose they’re doing the right thing. I guess sometimes they must fuck up and do something decent enough that society and the powers that be allow them to continue. I don’t think Fury was involved in that part of the contract – I think someone else was testing me. If I’m clever and careful enough maybe I can find out who it was. Swap their coffee whitener out for alum powder or something. Mess with the insides of their computers a little. Get a taste of the good old days. Ah, shit. We’ll have to figure out how Miles fits in, won’t we? Pain in the ass.”

May’s quiet.

“I’m kidding. I deserve this, May. Let them remember me as whatever they need to. That’s what I always wanted, right? To be notorious. I can’t fix it, but I don’t need to – we got you out, by doing this. Right?”

“Still. I’m not worth this either.”

“You’d always be, to me.”

“If both of us has a martyr complex, we’ll be in for a long last couple decades of our lives.”

“We’ll have to learn to grin and bear it. What’s that… the woman who loved her suffering is dead, I am her… whatever, I can’t remember it.”

“You’re quoting it wrong.”

“We’ll have to look it up when we get home.”

“Yes. Yes we will.”

Liv squeezes her shoulder; here on the promenade in Gantry, this time of night, there’s no one else around. At any rate, the two of them can hold their own even if they don’t look it. Besides, it’s so quiet from this far away, stranded as they are amongst the ebb and flow of people. Noise and bustle, but removed for now.

“You were always the better part of me, you know.”

“I don’t think that,” May replies. “Just that maybe I make it easier for your better parts to find expression.”

She smiles, and Liv can see the years there. All the care, and the strength.

“And what do you get out of it?” Liv asks softly, no bite.

“Do you have to ask?” May puts a hand on the side of Liv’s face. “I get _you_.”

* * *

**December 16, 2018 **

There’s been no time to write, with everything happening. I think I understand the meaning of the word paralytic.

I was set up in a safe house, after everything happened – hardly anything left of my house. I can’t talk about it.

I found Liv there, when I went to pick up some more things –the torso shielding sent the worst of whatever impact she sustained into the robotics themselves. I was lucky every enforcement officer was near Fisk Tower, lucky that they all knew to leave me well enough alone. She was in bad shape. Worse than I’d ever seen anyone in. I thought I would get Liv set up and then check in every now and then, but I fell asleep sitting up in the bed with her head in my lap. I don’t know how I feel about that, still.

Liv woke up two days after that, by which I mean it took a couple of days before she was fully lucid. While she was out of it she told me she loved me. Kept telling me she was sorry, though I don’t think that she remembers either of those things at all. A couple more weeks went by before we stopped pretending that this arrangement was going to be a short-term thing. I just… have no idea how any of this is going to end.

She came with me to the old house. Started crying. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever seen her do so. I’ve witnessed plenty of anger, but not anything resembling remorse until that moment. Shouldn’t have felt as good to see as it did.

I told her what S.H.I.E.L.D. said – even after the renovations, it’ll be too dangerous for me to live there. That they’re going to set me up somewhere else in the city, because I insisted I couldn’t leave Ben or Peter. Once the house is fixed up, I’ll look to sell it. Should be able to get a good offer. It’s a cultural landmark now, or something.

Liv asked to stay with me, then.

For the first time in my life I was willing to actually consider it.

So that’s where we’re at. 

**January 3, 2019 **

She told me.

About the people I’ve been working for.

<strike>I can’t </strike>

<strike>I wish she hadn’t fucking said anything. How dare she.</strike>

**February 7, 2019 **

_The eye of winter, city, anger, poverty, and death_  
_and the lips part and say: _I mean to go on living?  
_Am I speaking coldly when I tell you in a dream_  
_ or in this poem,_ There are no miracles?

What is there, then?

**February 23, 2019 **

They’ll be interviewing her in a little over three weeks. Of course it was only a matter of time; not a plea bargain, exactly. She’s not allowed to say. All that they’ll say is that it’s a good thing she didn’t skip town.

They implanted her with a tracker – more reliable than an ankle bracelet, they say – and she’s been strictly denied computer access. Wouldn’t be surprised if the safe house is already bugged. Since my lab is back at the old house, and most of the tech already re-located, that’s not going to be an issue; I don’t have so much as dialup here. When I want to connect to the internet, I have to go to the library. I’ve been writing things in the margins of the books I’ve given her. She’s allowed to read, after all. Marginalia and highlighting and formulas to encode some messages. 

I think I saw Todd out of the corner of my eye the other day. So I’m pretty certain they’re watching me too.

I want out, without them knowing why. Liv says that she can make that happen for me.

If there was anyone who could manage that…

**February 24, 2019 **

I can’t have all the details. But Liv says she thinks she knows what they’ll ask her about, and that my job is just to reiterate when they eventually talk to me that I never told her who Peter was. That’s true.

But I should have. 

I think the two of us should have had a lot of conversations sooner than we did. 

**May 7, 2019 **

Motherfucker.

The plan worked.

Not freedom, but something closer to. Even if she’ll have to be so careful, and so smart.

\--

**Spring, 2021**

The bandage on Liv’s arm where they extracted the tracker itches, and she avoids the urge to displace it in any way – fidgeting or quirks of behaviour show up worse on camera, she’s told, because a viewer’s attention is more drawn to the speaker. 

The high school teacher on the other end of the screen gives her concluding remarks, says Liv’s full name as scattered applause breaks through the room she’s streaming to. Swallowing, Liv cues up her computer’s audio.

“Thank you for that introduction, and to Visions Academy for having me conference in today to your class… most of you already know who I am. So instead, let me introduce you to my co-host, someone I’ve known for a long time –”

“Decades,” Karene chimes in dryly, her tone clear even through the teleconferencing software.

“Which – thank you – in my opinion means she knows her stuff better than anyone else in the field. Artificial photosynthesis is just one of countless alternative energy sources that are being examined for their viability, given the pivot away from fossil fuels which we’re currently experiencing. Dr. Karene Ramirez is a foremost expert on the subject, and she’s joining us from sunny California; I meanwhile, join you from my home study.”

Karene grins into her camera, both at Liv and the rest of the classroom dominating the screen.

“Solar cells were just the beginning; now, electronic cells which can create oxygen? That’s what I’m talking about. We’re thinking about the longevity of our atmosphere, here at Caltech.”

“My own portion of this presentation will be related to the leaps and strides being made in the realm of interdimensional energy harnessing,” Liv continues. “Related to the capture of waste energy from processes in the multiverse. But that’s for later. At the end we’ll be able to take some questions.Take it away, Karene.”

Liv mutes herself, kills her camera, and feels a hand land on her shoulder; May squeezes there, gently.

“Do you see him?” 

“I think he’s staying out of view,” Liv replies. “Miles elects to keep away from the front row.”

“I’ll have to ask him later on what he thought of all this.”

“Should I ask him myself?”

“If you want; he’s more comfortable around you these days, so it can’t hurt. He’ll be by for some tech updates later tonight. How are you feeling?”

“Stupid,” Liv admits. “I would rather record to a camera and get this over with, or be there in person. I recognize the reasons why _that’s _not about to happen.”

“Mm. Well, knock this out of the park – congrats on the first session getting off the ground. I’ll have coffee for you to celebrate, when you’re done. If I’m not downstairs, I’ll be in the garden.”

“Thanks.” Liv presses her lips to May’s hand before swinging back towards her monitor, tuning back in to what Karene is talking about – bright, smooth animatics showing sunlight and chemical processes move over the screen as Karene narrates the meaning of them. Liv activates her camera again, resting a chin on her palm and her elbow on the desk. The voice of her friend issues through the speakers; and her presence is enough to make Liv almost forget the circumstances under which this all is happening. Right now, that’s something she can relax into. Afterwards, Karene will call, and probably tease her and May for what took them so damn long to get in touch. Liv will drink coffee, and stay on top of when her next mandatory check-in is, and think about what happens next – there’s always what happens next.

For now, though, she sits. Watches, listens, prepares for her chance to speak despite everything.

All around her, the world moves, and moves, and moves on.

* * *

_Well, that’s finished. The woman who cherished  
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.  
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,  
but I want to go on from here with you  
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain._

\- From "Twenty-one Love Poems" by Adrienne Rich; Poem VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well.  
I find myself feeling really emotional at the end of this fic, because it's one that I was working on since... at least August of 2019, months before I started posting it. Since November I've found myself pulled towards other forms of writing, so even though most of everything was written, I found myself struggling to finish the chapter titled "Accelerator" until this month.  
These are strange and fucked up times. And storytelling might not solve or fix anything, but it's been helping me and I hope it can be of some help to you as well. 
> 
> Thank you to AO3 user rillarev, whose comments motivated me to pick this fic back up and finish it. Without you, it might have stayed that Great WIP lurking at the back of my mind for months longer than it has.  
Thank you also to starfoozle for your dedicated beta-reading and long-standing support, as well as formerlyanon, C, dreamlogic, earnedmagic, mercurialism, and others who kept encouraging me from the start. 
> 
> This is the longest fic I've written, in the first fic series I've written, and is only the second multi-chapter fic I've actually finished writing. So I hope that you found it worth reading, because I had so much fun writing it and experimenting in this series with format and POV and voice and presentation. 
> 
> Cheers to all, and thank you for reading.


End file.
